Lost Boy (Nostelle)
by justrumbelledearie
Summary: "He's a frequent flyer," Nurse Ratched says, like he's not even in the room. "Unmedicated bipolar. Likes to stick things in his chest and get sent up to Bethlem Royal for a little mental health vacation. Homeless, obviously." Belle & Nosty from "Safe."
1. Chapter 1

His chest is on fucking fire and his wrist is a misery, but the footfalls and clatter are the sounds of a hospital, not the clink, so that's all right then.

Nosty needs to use the lavvie something fierce, but the bag o' shite nurses must've given him something to take the edge off, and everything's gone a bit fuzzy around the edges. Also, they've nicked his kilt. He's starkers under this thin hospital blanket.

The room is a sickly shade of yellow with a stained laminate floor, so maybe this is St. Mary's or King's College? All the fucking NHS hospitals in this cunting city look alike. The gauze on his chest hasn't been changed, and the cruddy, rusty blood stain has spread up to his shoulder.

The gauze on his wrist is a fresh, snowy white, with an obscene half-moon of red.

He remembers the look of horror on the copper's face when he turned and saw his prisoner had damn near bit through his arm. Nosty had been screaming, blood dripping from his chin, because he was a brilliant fucking showman, thank you very fucking much, and also because it hurt like fuck all. But the nylon cuff fastening his ankle to the bed rail means he's likely earned his Section 2. Jesus, what it takes nowadays to get himself a little holiday.

The other bed in this shite room is occupied, and Nosty looks over at the sorry bloke across the way. He's a goner, judging by his slack, sunken expression and his gray pallor. There's a lass holding his limp hand, reading from a little book with a posh London accent. It's nice, the way she glances up at the bloke from time to time, running her thumb over his wrist. Nosty closes his eyes and listens to the story.

_"Then all went on their knees, and holding out their arms cried, 'O Wendy lady, be our mother!' 'Ought I?' Wendy said, all shining. 'Of course, it's frightfully fascinating, but you see I am only a little girl. I have no real experience.'_

_'That doesn't matter,' said Peter, as if he were the only person present who knew all about it, though he was really the one who knew the least. 'What we need is just a nice motherly person.' 'Oh dear!' Wendy said, 'you see I feel that is exactly what I am.'_

_'It is, it is,' they cried; 'we saw it at once.' 'Very well,' she said, 'I will do my best. Come inside at once, you naughty children; I am sure your feet are damp…' _

It must be real fucking nice to have a pretty, delicate lass like that reading to you and fussing over you and adjusting your blankets, even if you are just a body on your way to the morgue. One of his foster mums was like that, when he first went into care, tucking him in all sweet with kisses and a story. Her husband was a right bastard, though, with heavy fists and a belt buckle that blackened his ribs and arse.

Nosty has shared quarters with plenty of daft, noisy fucks while in the hospital and the dorms. He's glad he's with this pair tonight. Maybe he'll finally be able to catch some rest.

But first, he needs to get up and go take a pish.

With a groan, he heaves upright and reaches for the cuff around his ankle. It's velcro, so it's difficult but not impossible to loosen one-handed. Soft fingers with a swish manicure cover his own, and he hears that posh little accent offering, "Let me help you."

The lass carefully unwinds the cuff, then wants to call the nurse to assist him.

"The less I see of those fucking meat merchants the better, bird. How would _you_ like to see me to the toilet?" Nosty swings his legs over the side of the bed, and the blanket falls away, exposing his bait and tackle. He's having a laugh at her expense, mostly because he doesn't like anyone edging up on him like that, even if they do smell real fucking nice.

Yet when he stands, the world goes tits up, and he'd be kissing the fucking linoleum if it weren't for the lass slipping underneath his armpit and walking him slowly across the room. Her blue eyes are on his face, not his tossel, and they'd be pretty if they weren't pink from crying over the nearly-dead bloke. When they reach the lavvie, she settles him on the toilet and says, "Call if you need anything," before shutting the door with a soft click. He has his pish sitting down like a fucking bint and decides to stay on the throne for awhile to collect his thoughts.

While Nosty is thinking about birds and how nice they can be right before they cut your fucking heart out, all hell breaks loose outside the lavvie door. The posh lass is screaming something about _"Don't touch him!"_ and another woman is hollering back, and when Nosty throws open the door, he sees the girl and a stony-faced nurse squaring off over the lifeless bloke's bed.

"It's been two days, luv," the nurse announces over poshie's loud sobbing, "This isn't fair to him; you know it's not. There hasn't been a lick of brain activity since they brought him in here. You need to prepare yourself to make some decisions about life support and organ donation."

The lass moans and leans over the stiff's bed, pressing her cheek to his forehead, then kissing his eyelids and whispering something low and frantic in his ear. The book she was reading earlier lays open on his chest. Something inside Nosty twists and snaps, and then he's right in Nurse Ratched's face yelling, "Get the fuck out of here, you fucking minger! She's fucking grieving, yeah? Have you a heart like a block of ice, you cunt?"

Nosty screams the bint out the door and slams it shut with a loud, "Fuck!"

Poshie's crying has given way to a stunned silence, but now she's back to stroking the dead bloke's chest, and that's nice. Nosty figures he has a few minutes before Nurse Ratched shows up with orderlies and another sedative. He settles back in his bed and covers himself so that they can have a proper conversation.

"If you want to leave him on that fucking ventilator until next Christmas, there's nothing they can fucking do about it. Don't let that bint intimidate you. She just wants fewer beds to look in on when she's making her rounds."

Poshie gives him a watery smile and a soft, "Thank you." It's nice, being around someone with some proper fucking manners. His mates are his family, but they aren't housebroken, and they don't offer up much by way of conversation.

"He called me the night he overdosed," the lass says, staring not at Nosty, but through him, rewinding the memory. "He said he didn't know where he was, only that it was a bad neighborhood, and he wanted me to come pick him up. He was high. I told him I'd come only if I could take him directly to rehab." She swallows hard, struggling against the tightness in her throat. "His drug counselor said I needed to stop enabling him. She said the only way he would get better was if I allowed him to…to bottom out…"

She loses her battle for stoicism at "bottom out," and weeps into the dead junkie's neck for a while, her palm pressed to his gray cheek. Nosty looks away because he's heard this fucking story hundreds of times before. Fuck, he probably sold the bloke his last fix.

"You're my sweet baby brother," she says at last, brushing back the stiff's hair and staring at him like she wants to memorize every fucking detail. "I should have come, sweet boy. I'm so, so, so sorry." Poshie draws a deep breath, then picks up the little book and goes on reading.

Nosty's eyes are shut when the nurse returns with the orderlies and the thorzine.

"He's a frequent flyer," Nurse Ratched says, like he's not even in the fucking room. "Unmedicated bipolar. Likes to stick things in his chest and get sent up to Bethlem Royal for a little mental health vacation. Homeless, obviously."

Nosty opens his mouth to tell the lot of them to go to fuck, but the words get garbled up in his mouth, and he realizes with a nasty lurch that he isn't feeling very fucking well at all. While he struggles to put together a sentence, the low rent hospital coppers get to work with their metal restraints, and then he feels a sharp jab in his thigh, and then he's feeling nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

_"He does so need a mother," Jane said. "Yes, I know," Wendy admitted rather forlornly; "no one knows it so well as I."_

It's the same hospital room and the same posh voice.

Everything burns and itches: his face, his chest, his arms, his thighs. Nosty's been in piss-poor shape before. He's eaten spoiled food and gotten so ill he shit his own fucking pants. He's been so plastered he passed out on a park bench and nearly died from exposure. Several times, actually. He knows what it is to be weak and sick and underfed, but this feels different. His heart is racing and his breathing is thready and shallow. This feels like an unraveling. It feels like death.

He twists his head and sees that the posh lass isn't alone with her dead brother. A priest is beside her, swaying silently on his feet while she reads from her little book. For a moment Nosty thinks that the fucking Papist has come for _him,_ to read him his last rites, but, no, Father's staring at the junkie, and Nosty understands that he's witnessing a fairytale fare-thee-well.

_"As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white, and her figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every spring cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly. When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless."_

It's the last page of her book, and the lass shuts it with a soft, shuddering sigh. The ventilator has already been removed from the dead bloke's mouth, and she bends forward to brush a kiss across his waxy lips. The priest, whose eyes are watery and bloodshot, crosses himself with shaking fingertips and murmurs, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen."

"Amen," she echoes, and Nosty would laugh if his throat weren't dry as the fucking Sahara. Doesn't she realize Father is drunk off his arse? Christ, it's a strange, sad world.

After the kiss and the amen, the lass summons Nurse Ratched with the little button attached to the dead bloke's bed, and then she sinks into a chair while the body is covered and wheeled out the door.

The pished priest offers to stay, but he looks relieved when she sends him on his way. Off to the pub for another tumbler of whiskey, no doubt.

It isn't fair that a dead man gets tears and prayers and attentive care, and meanwhile he's fucking dying over here and no one seems to be the wiser.

Nosty opens his mouth, but the best he can manage is a low, scratchy _"Ach…"_ and a twitch of his fingers.

It's enough. The lass glances over and then comes to his bedside straightaway.

"You look worse," she says quietly, touching the inside of her wrist to his cheek and then his forehead. "You're…burning."

She disappears into the hallway and returns shortly with a harassed looking bird in teddy bear scrubs.

"He's in a bad way," she tells the young attendant, "He was speaking earlier. Now he's not. His skin feels clammy and feverish. Please check him?"

This particular attendant is well acquainted with Nosty and not at all kindly disposed, but poshie seems to be his good luck charm because after a quick glance at his vitals, Ms. Teddy Bear is off and running for the doctor.

The lass is staring at him with warm concern, her eyes still pink from crying over her brother and her eyelashes wet and spiky. She takes hold of his good hand and promises, "You'll be okay. Don't be afraid. I'll stay. My name is Belle."

It's a pretty name, and it's a generous thought, but, no, he won't be fucking 'okay.' He's never been fucking 'okay.'

Still, he holds onto Belle's hand like a life raft and doesn't let go when Nurse Ratched reappears with blood vials and syringes and begins to snip and roughly peel away the gauze from his chest.


	3. Chapter 3

Having grown up with two younger brothers and a widowed father, Belle understands exactly what men need when they fall ill.

They must be consoled and fussed over and soothed and allowed to regress to a clinging, childlike state. To overlook a minor cold or injury in Belle's family was to invite an increasingly dramatic performance of woe from the unwell party, and she would far rather err on the side of overindulgence.

Honestly, she never minded tending them. Especially not James, the sweet baby of their small family.

When in good health, her youngest brother was full of high spirits and waggishness, but when sick, he became her darling little boy once more. The thought of his smooth brow, which she had felt for fever and kissed so often, now chilled and stored somewhere in the hospital's basement has Belle feeling nauseous and lightheaded. Instead, she focuses her attention on the rail-thin, suffering man in front of her.

"Nosty" is written on the chart at the foot of his bed, and no surname is given. Earlier, when he lost consciousness during a rather gruesome chest wound culture, she had asked one of the nurses if there was anyone they could call.

"You mean like a next of kin? For Nosty? You'd likely find them under a bridge, luv."

So he was without family, at least for the moment. And plenty scared, judging by the way his eyes searched her face before rolling back in his skull.

Belle cannot stop herself from wondering if there was anyone with James during his final moments. _Someone_ had called for the ambulance service, so perhaps someone was also there to hold his hand and comfort him when he slipped away. She'd like to think so.

Belle presses Nosty's hand tightly, hoping he can feel it. Even unconscious, she doesn't want him to think himself abandoned.

After the sun has set and a second bag of intravenous antibiotics has been emptied into his bruised arm, Nosty's slender chest heaves, and his eyes flicker open. Dirty fingernails dig into Belle's palm, and he chokes out, "I don't want…to fucking die here."

Thankfully, this part comes so much easier to her than watching and waiting. "Oh sweetheart, you aren't going to die. You have blood poisoning. Sepsis. It's serious, but you'll recover. Are you thirsty?"

He is, so Belle slips her hand behind his matted dreads and offers him sips of water from a small plastic cup.

"Is there someone I should call?" she asks, and his nostrils flare. "A friend? Family?"

They stare at each other for a beat: his eyes hard and furious, hers wide and gentle.

"There's another thirty minutes until visiting hours are over," Belle says at last, realizing he doesn't intend to break the strained silence. "Would you like me to read to you for a short while?" She takes the little book out of her leather handbag.

"I saw what happened…to the last sorry bastard you read aloud to."

Nosty watches her flinch and blink hard. When he doesn't have his fists, he has his words. More often, he uses both, simultaneously. No, _sweetheart,_ there's no fucking mum or da or wifey or devoted sister that will come rushing to his bedside.

Nosty waits for the lass to collect her expensive purse and put on her posh pumps and _get the fuck out._

Instead, Belle exhales slowly and slips her soft hand back into his. "It's the only book I have with me. It was his favorite. I'll bring something different tomorrow."

They watch each other warily, Nosty turning that slippery word "tomorrow" over and over in his head. At last, Belle begins to read:

_"All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this…"_


	4. Chapter 4

Belle's flat overlooking Eaton Square has the uncanny feel of a dwelling deserted during wartime. The remains of her three-day-old breakfast are laid out on the kitchen table. An upended juice glass draws fruit flies. Her cast off flannel robe is crumpled on the living room rug, and a cordless phone is resting nearby. A chair is overturned.

She didn't think to switch off the radio when she bolted out the door for the hospital, and the clipped voice of a BBC newscaster reads tomorrow's forecast. More rain and sleet. It's going to be an unusually cold October.

There will be time for cleaning up the mess and opening the mail and returning phone calls from concerned friends. Right now, Belle walks to the fridge and takes out two bottles of lager. She drinks the first bottle while sitting on her overstuffed sofa, not bothering to remove her tweed jacket. While she drinks, she thinks about people who sleep under bridges and long ago bedtime stories and the smell of James's hair after he spent the day playing out-of-doors in the sunshine.

She takes a long pull from the bottle and thinks about Nosty and the muttered asides of the overworked nurses. It seems no one would have been especially troubled if he had finally "popped off," as one weary-looking hospital attendant so eloquently put it.

It's far easier to think about Nosty and what sort of help there might be for a homeless man with episodes of mania and depression — much easier than it is to think about her dead brother. So Belle thinks about Nosty while she clears away her old breakfast dishes, and she thinks about him while she eats her pitiful, late supper over the kitchen sink, and she thinks about him while she enjoys her first shower in three days, the hot water scalding her skin as she scrubs away the lonely, antiseptic smell of the hospital.

Early tomorrow morning, her brother Matthew will arrive at Heathrow on an overnight flight from the Americas. With him will be Belle's sweet, sensible sister-in-law Mary. Between the three of them, somehow they'll manage to give James a proper send-off.

Lying in bed, feeling flushed and woozy from her second beer, Belle listens to the beginnings of a rainstorm. She remembers Nosty's honey-brown eyes: so vigilant, so intelligent, and so, so angry. They remind her of James's after he had slept rough for a few nights, then turned up hungry on her doorstep.

It's an awful, hollowed out feeling when someone you love dies. Belle tugs the spare pillow down beneath the quilt, clutching it tightly to her chest and belly. It feels better, somehow, to cradle and kiss the cotton fabric and pretend that she is offering comfort to someone who needs it. "Shhh," Belle tells the pillow, "Shhh…" and then her 'shhh' becomes a long, shuddering sob, and she buries her face in the soft cotton and weeps until she is too tired to do even that.

Her blue eyes are bloodshot when she greets Matthew and Mary the next morning, but, then, so are theirs. They form a tight, clinging huddle in the middle of the airport lobby, and although Belle thought she was all cried out after last night, she realizes straightaway she was wrong.

"I'm glad Dad isn't alive to see…" Matthew begins, and Belle quickly agrees, "I know."

After her family has checked into their hotel room and Mary has had a shower, they make their way over to King's College Hospital. Matthew has promised to settle the medical bill and take care of any necessary arrangements. Explaining that she wants to visit a patient who was with her when James passed on, Belle bids them goodbye at the front desk with an agreement to ring her brother when it's lunch time.

Nosty is sleeping when she enters his room. The other bed has already been filled, and the privacy curtain is drawn. At rest, his pale face appears younger. He's twenty-five, if that. Belle draws up a chair and takes his hand.

The young nurse who enters the room a short while later to replace Nosty's saline drip is startled to see her patient has a visitor.

"He had a difficult night last night," she explains hastily, perhaps thinking that Belle is looking askance at the metal restraints. "He was disoriented and unable to keep down fluids. His vitals are improving though. Give him a week or two, and he should be well enough for discharge."

"Where are his belongings?" Belle asks, staring at the flimsy hospital gown they've dressed him in and remembering yesterday's trip to the toilet. The nurse points to his things: a black leather jacket, scuffed boots, and a stained, red kilt.

Next to his clothing, Belle places a small, cloth book bag. From her purse, she draws out a ballpoint pen and scratches out a note on a page from her daily planner: "For Nosty. I'll be back later tonight. Love, Belle." She props the note up against the cloth bag where he's sure to see it and hesitates for a moment before bending down to gently peck his gauze-wrapped wrist.

"You're still here," she tells him quietly, "No 'popping off.' I'll bring something better than hospital food tonight." She leaves him to his rest.

Her day is a blur of appointments: with her boss to arrange for additional time off, with the sextant to prepare for James's burial adjacent to her father's gravesite, and with the minister to discuss the memorial service. Matthew and Mary are a tremendous help, but they succumb to jet lag early in the evening, and she bids them an early goodnight. The busyness of the day is a welcome distraction from grief, and Belle is glad that one final errand will keep her away from her lonely flat for another hour at least.

When she steps off the hospital elevator, she hears furious, hoarse shouting. Belle arrives at Nosty's doorway out of breath, her heart pounding.

"Don't you fucking touch me you, you bawface cunt! Come at me again, and I'll slit your throat so fucking fast and deep you'll think you was Anne-fucking-Boleyn!"

"You've got _nits,_ Nosty!" It's the stern-looking nurse from the other night, the one who tried to make Belle see sense about James. "We can't have you infesting the entire wing. You can either calm yourself down, or I'll bring in some orderlies and a sedative to do it for you. Either way, the hair has to go."

"The fucking hell it does!" The metal restraint scrapes along the bed rail as he lurches forward, snarling.

The nurse turns on her heel and sees Belle, immobile in the doorway.

"Talk to your friend, luv," she growls, "I'd rather not put him out, not with a sepsis diagnosis, but I will if need be." She brushes past Belle, who surprises her by plucking at her elbow.

"Sedatives won't be necessary," Belle says in a soft, even tone, and Nosty echoes the sentiment with a great deal more profanity. "My brothers were sent home from school with nits far too often. If you can spare a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a shower cap, I'll take care of it, and you can see to your other patients."

The nurse's face softens somewhat, and she admits, "My mum used the same remedy on me when I was a wee thing. Ugh, how I hated it. Just see that he keeps his yap shut. The bloke in the bed over needs his rest."

She brings Belle the bottle and the shower cap and looks beyond relieved to leave them to it.


	5. Chapter 5

"This is going to stink," Belle warns, shrugging off her tweed jacket. "If we eat dinner first, there's a chance you won't be able to keep it down. I'm sorry, but it's going to smell that bad. On the other hand, it's possible you'll lose your appetite entirely after breathing in the fumes. It's your call, Nosty."

Her voice is low and quite serious, but Belle's blue eyes crinkle kindly around the corners.

His very survival depends on reading people's faces and bodies. Ever since he was a wee beastie, he's been able to swiftly determine who will hit, who will cower, who is posturing, who is pished, and who has fuck all to lose. It's easy enough to see that Belle is genuinely glad to be here with him at the hospital, discussing supper and options for nit removal. What he can't be certain of is _why._ Most likely, 'here' is a favorable alternative to being elsewhere. She seems a decent sort, but he doesn't trust her motives in the slightest.

"I brought soup," she says, "from the little Vietnamese cafe down the road. 'Asian Penicillin' is what my father used to call it. The ginger warms you right up and soothes the throat. Also, some medicinal chocolate ice cream." She smiles, displaying the food containers, and Nosty stares back at her, nonplussed.

"A bag of books? And now fucking soup and ice cream? Just what the actual fuck are you, some kind of sanctified social worker?" He rests his head against the back of the upright hospital bed and narrows his eyes, appraising her.

"A professor, actually. I teach at King's College." Belle reaches across his blanket-covered lap and presses the button that summons the nurse. "Film and theatre studies. Occasionally a literature course when someone is away on sabbatical."

Her manicured hand is resting near his injured wrist, and she stares for a spell at the stained gauze.

"No, I'm not a saint or a social worker or some kind of bleeding heart. What if we just say…I feel I owe you? If you hadn't taken up my side, I could have been cowed into saying goodbye to my brother before I was ready. So thank you, for that." Belle tentatively brushes her thumb over the back of his hand, and, fucking hell, her eyes have gone watery. Birds cry over the slightest little thing.

"You didn't seem cowed," Nosty says, hastily moving his hand out of reach.

Nurse Ratched reappears in the doorway, looking put out. "Yes, luv? You needed something?" She ignores Nosty, addressing a spot just above Belle's forehead.

"You forgot to undo the restraints, ma'am," Belle explains patiently, "and we need to take care of this in the bathroom with the fan on so as not to bother — " Without looking, she gestures to the silent patient behind the privacy curtain. Belle would rather not be reminded of the days she spent on the other side of this room.

"Yes, yes, I'll send an orderly in. You behave yourself, Nosty," the nurse instructs pertly, ignoring his breathy, insubordinate little laugh and the 'V' he flicks at her back with his free hand.

"So…food first, or the unsavory bit?" Belle inquires, looking on as a weary fellow arrives and unlocks Nosty's ankle and uninjured wrist. There are red marks from where the cuffs have rubbed him nearly raw. Her mind skitters off to the angry, red track marks that marred James's arms and feet.

Now, there's a third option that Nosty is silently considering: he could take his things and fucking _go._ All he wanted was a bit of a holiday, and what did he get for his troubles? A manky blood infection.

He isn't some sorry stray who needs to wag his tail for a charity meal. If he wants food, he takes food. Simple as that. He takes it from cafe tables, from carryout places that don't yet recognize him and his boys, and from trash cans, if the need arises. A warm bed is harder to come by in October, but he's slept rough on the streets of London since he was twelve, so flyovers and doorways suit him fine. The coppers recently moved his gang along from under Blackfriars Bridge, so he'll likely find his boys beneath Waterloo. They act like fucking knobs while he's away. Probably blown through all their cash on hand already.

Now, contrariwise, if ever there were someone he could tap for a tenner, this is the lass. With her silk-lined jacket and expensive leather boots, he could likely tap her for a great deal more than a tenner. It's useful to have acquaintances with steady paychecks and open pockets. Most likely, he's some kind of surrogate for her dead junkie brother. Nosty suspects that, at least while she's grieving, Belle will fetch him anything he's of a mind to name. Fuck, he could probably say he doesn't fancy chocolate ice cream, and she'd run out straightaway and fetch him a different flavor.

Also (and this is the deciding factor), his head really does fucking itch.

They settle on supper first, which Nosty consumes with messy, hurried gulps. Belle picks up her pace and offers him the pint of ice cream. It has little bits of gooey brownie mixed in. She accepts only one bite, letting him have the rest all to himself. He finishes the carton before she's gotten around to her last spoonful of soup.

In the lavvie, Nosty sits on the wee, plastic fold-down seat meant for invalids. Belle offers him a hand towel to press to his mouth and nose, then slowly tilts his head back so that it's resting on her splayed, outstretched hand. She carefully, meticulously pours rubbing alcohol over every section of his scalp, working it into the base of his locks with the pads of her fingers. Even with the towel held tightly to his face, the stench truly is awful.

After emptying the entire bottle, Belle wrings out the excess, and covers his hair with the shower cap, pulling it taut and creating a tight seal.

"Don't lean forward," she warns, "It's torture if it gets in your eyes. We'll give it a little time to work." The daft lass stands behind him, holding his head in both hands while the nits slowly suffocate.

His jugular is exposed, and he fucking hates it. Belle's eyes have strayed from his hair to his neck, and they linger on his ink. If she knew what that little swallow tat signified, Nosty doubts she would be so willing to cradle his head and rinse this shite out of his hair.

"You look pretty fucking young to be a professor." He figures it's better to select a topic of conversation before she does. From this awkward angle, he watches Belle's dimples appear. She really is fucking nice to look at, even if it's staring up her nostrils.

"I'm adjunct. No permanent job yet. But, yes, I finished my doctorate earlier than most. Doesn't it make you feel better, knowing you're in the hands of a doctor?" She grins at her own joke, and he unconsciously mirrors her, if only for a moment.

Remembering himself, Nosty decides it's time to take the piss out: "So you teach people how to watch movies."

"And plays. And sometimes how to read books." She's still smiling. It's clear she loves her job. "Let's rinse this out now."

The rinsing takes even longer than the application. Belle is very gentle and very thorough. The warm water and the way her fingers press and scratch against his skull is tranquilizing. If it weren't for his arched, exposed neck, he could pass out right here in the lavvie. Fuck, he's tired all of a sudden.

"You're not worried you're going to catch some kind of fucking disease doing this?" Nosty asks when she leans him forward and hands him a towel to pat his hair dry.

"Afraid of nits?" Her brow furrows. "I'll just wash my hands after. Is disease something you're worried about? They can run any sort of test you like here, Nosty."

Sorry he brought it up, he presses his lips together and concentrates on toweling off. Belle sees him to bed and promises to visit the following day. She says she'll bring him another pint of chocolate ice cream.

After that first night, the days begin to bleed into one another. He sleeps for long stretches, then Belle arrives with a pastry in the morning or takeout and a movie in the evening. During one visit, she's red-eyed and remote, and he gleans that she just saw her family off to the airport after her brother's sparsely attended memorial service. While they're both watching the hospital telly's grainy screen, he let's her rest her hand on his arm. From then on, Belle comes earlier and stays later, and he finds himself glad of it.

Nurse Ratched runs a full screen on him, likely at Belle's urging, and Nosty's fuckstruck to discover he doesn't have any of the dozens of types of nob rot he rightly ought to have. Makes him want to go out and get himself a gobble just to celebrate.

After a week, Belle returns to work, and Nosty takes particular delight in hearing about the homework she's dishing out. When she asks why he's interested in her pop quizzes and writing assignments, Nosty responds with a shrug: "Schadenfreude, sweetheart. 'Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.'" She laughs and stares at him longer than he's strictly comfortable with.

And then, early one evening, Belle exits the hospital elevator and hears the stern nurse spit out Nosty's name. Her voice is shrill, and she sounds as if she's at her wit's end.

"It's time for you to _go,_ Nosty. I swear on my grandmum's life that I'll see your girlfriend gets her things. But you cannot, _you cannot,_ spend all day and all night in my lobby waiting for her. It's time to go."

"Not causing anyone any trouble, am I?" Belle hears Nosty reply in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. Yet, when she rounds the corner, she can tell by the twitching of his fingers that his limited supply of self-control is nearly exhausted.

"You're causing _me_ trouble, because I've had to watch your ugly mug pacing my halls for the past _six hours._ I swear, I'll give your posh miss her books back. Oh, thank God, here she is. Can you get him out of here? He was discharged this afternoon."

Nosty spins to face her, and it's strange to see him in his street clothes, the red kilt pulled tight around his narrow hips.

"They discharged me…" he begins.

_"Six hours ago!"_ The nurse cuts in. He ignores her.

"I wanted to see you got your things back. Thanks for the food." He hands her the canvas book bag and turns to go.

"Nosty! Wait, I have something for you," Belle tugs a business card out of her wallet and scribbles furiously across the back of it. "If you ever need anything, anything at all, here's my cell number and home address. Please don't hesitate…" He takes the card from her outstretched hand, staring at it.

Now she's rummaging around in her jacket pocket. "There's something else…" She pulls out a bracelet, made of heavy, expensive, silver chain links. Nosty recognizes it from two weeks prior. Her brother died wearing it.

Belle holds out the bracelet, and he stares at it, grinding his teeth. Just what the actual fuck is she thinking? A bloke could get killed over an pricey piece of jewelry like that. He'd fall asleep on his pallet and wake to a crazed junkie hacking away at his arm.

He meets her blue eyes, so kind and hopeful, and realizes it's time to kill _this,_ whatever this is between them.

"I know you loved him, Belle, but I am _not_…_fucking_…_him."_

Ignoring the offered gift, he rips her business card to emphasize each word, then lets the pieces scatter around their feet.

Nosty turns on the heel of his boot and strides down the hall, into the elevator, and then out of the fucking hospital, back into _his_ world.


	6. Chapter 6

Nosty's head is bowed against the frigid, spitting rain. His chafed, red hands are tightly fisted and thrust deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. Long, wet ropes of hair slap against his face and shoulders, keeping time with his boots as they strike the damp pavement. Already, he's put ten blocks between himself and Belle and that fucking hospital, and he's moving fast.

Glancing furtively over his shoulder, Nosty quickens his pace.

On his left, rush hour traffic creeps along the A202. Impatient drivers lay on their horns, eager to get home to their warm suppers and soft slippers and tumblers of scotch. Hungry, overtired children wail in back seats, and commuters curse one another, pounding on their steering wheels. Brakes screech, and red taillights flicker, and people shout, but this is a tony, residential, _safe_ neighborhood, so Nosty allows the angry, noisy lot of them to slip away, sinking deeper into his own troubled thoughts: the hospital…the bracelet…Belle.

Once he crosses over Lambeth Road, nearer to the river, he'll need to hold his head up high and put on the swagger, but, for now, _he_ is the only danger for miles around. No need to put on a show.

With every footfall, a single word reverberates within Nosty's wet skull: _"Fuck."_

He takes long strides, tramping through dirty puddles and soaking his only pair of socks: _"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."_

His shins are abraded and sore from where the sodden, red kilt flicks and rubs against them: _"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."_

On either side of the busy street, warm flats are filling with soft lamplight, and tellies are flickering to life, broadcasting the evening news: _"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." _

A beautiful, _dutiful_ lass (his fairy-fucking-godmother, really) all but begged him to take an expensive piece of jewelry off her hands. Quite literally. Nosty can still see the heft of the bracelet in his mind's eye, dangling from Belle's outstretched fingers, the soft luster of the silver and her touching eagerness to fasten it around his injured wrist: a talisman, a charm, her tender claim upon him.

The dead man's silver is worth 400 quid at least, possibly more. Within days, Nosty could have easily doubled that amount. Then tripled it.

Oh, he would have been set for a good long while. Able to take a _true_ holiday. A little mental health vacation. But looking into Belle's earnest eyes, blue and clear as the summer sky, so yearning and so fucking _good_…Nosty knew he couldn't sell her dead brother's bracelet. He couldn't sell it, and he sure as shite couldn't wear the fucking thing while sleeping under a fucking bridge. _"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."_

He's come to Clapham Road. If he continues onward instead of turning right, he'll be at Belle's dry flat in under an hour.

Oh yes, he memorized that address. Her phone number, too.

Nosty's memory is like that: sharp and agile and fail-safe. On occasion, he thinks it might be nice to switch it off and take a little rest. There's plenty he'd like to forget. Not Belle, though. He wants to remember the way she looked in the dark, when the pale, blue light from the hospital telly set her pretty face aglow. He wants to remember the smile that always seemed to be playing around the corners of her mouth and the warmth in her voice when she whispered g_oodnight, Nosty,_ careful not to wake whoever else was sleeping with him in the room that night.

He wants to hold on to what it was like to be with someone who treated him like he was family, laughing and sharing her spoon when he groused that she had helped herself to a larger portion of their nightly dessert: "Here then, have a bit of mine, Nosty. You whinger." Belle had happily licked the spoon clean afterwards, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to share utensils with a mad, minky waster such as himself.

With a gnarl, deep in his throat, he turns right, away from Belle's posh neighborhood and her inexplicable fondness for him. _"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."_

Now, if he were to go to her flat (and he fucking _won't,_ but say for argument's sake that he did), Nosty believes Belle would still be happy to see him. She wears her heart on her sleeve, that one, and the gladness he read on her face, day after day at the hospital, was genuine. He may not understand _why_ she lights up at the sorry sight of him, even after her grief for her brother had lost its sharp edges, but he trusts his ability to read people. And Belle fucking cares.

She might even try to hug him. He can imagine it: standing on her doorstep, out of the rain, and tiny Belle reaching out to pull him in.

What would it feel like to let her? Would she slip her hands beneath his leather jacket and clutch him tight around the waist? Maybe be so happy to see him that she'd press her flushed cheek to his chest and cry a little bit?

Belle's so fucking wee; she only comes up to his chin. Possibly she'd tip her head back and smile a watery smile at him. Tears not for her dead brother, but just for him, all his. And then…maybe he'd comfort his pretty bird by kissing the soft, white flesh of her neck and her delicate collarbone and by licking the little hollow of her throat until she begged him for a proper fucking kiss, her pink, pliable lips parting for his tongue. She'd taste so good; he fucking knows it, like the sweetened tea she carries with her in a thermos and sipped while grading papers by his bedside. Would she be shy in his arms or fucking begging for it? Nosty can't decide which would excite him more…_"Fuck! Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."_

At Lambeth Road, the sidewalk becomes cracked and uneven. Tidy window boxes filled with autumn mums give way to iron security bars and drawn curtains. Everything looks a bit more shoddy.

Nosty throws his narrow shoulders back, shakes his long hair out of his face, and begins to saunter, as if there's nowhere he'd rather be than out for a stroll in a dodgy neighborhood on a shite night such as this one.

He strolls past liquor stores and cheap takeout places, greasy fish and chip spots and run-down corner markets. His empty stomach rumbles.

His injured wrist is still tucked conspicuously into his jacket pocket, as if he's fingering a weapon. In actual fact, those sheepshagging cunts at the hospital nicked his blade, but there's no need for anyone else to know it. His other arm hangs loose now, swinging confidently as he strolls. He owns these fucking streets.

Walking down a steep, muddy bank, Nosty sees the glow of a half dozen trashcan fires burning beneath the Waterloo Bridge. His boys are carrying on about who's most pished and who amongst them is the biggest arse bandit. It's past dark, so they're all drunk as skunks and fucking _loud_ besides.

"Miss me, ya minky bastards?" Nosty spreads his arms wide and receives the welcoming hollers with the beneficence of a king. His smile (more a baring of teeth, really) glitters dangerously and doesn't reach his eyes.

"It's fucking Nosty!"

"Oi, Nosty!"

"Where ya been at, ya Weedgie cunt?"

He lets that last bit slide because they're all beyond blootered and won't remember fuck all come morning. A smoke is offered, then a half-empty bottle of cheap gin. When he takes his place of honor on an overturned milk crate near the largest fire, it's impossible _not_ to think of Belle and the warm suppers she brought him nightly.

Early on, she'd discovered his sweet tooth, and so Belle had plundered the bakeries near the university in a blatant attempt to win him over with buttery shortbread, slices of chocolate cake, and clootie dumplings. On the whole, it had been successful.

What sweet treat had gone uneaten tonight, resting on the edge of the nurses' station in its white bakery box while he had fled a pair of pretty blue eyes and an outstretched hand?

The food was really fucking nice, okay? But even better was the little game they played with the movies from the King's College library. Every evening, Belle would bring one film she loved, one she loathed, and one that was part of the coursework she assigned her students. He would guess, usually correctly, which was which, and then choose which film they'd watch later on.

If he chose something from her "blacklist," as she called it, Belle would leave a little lamp on and grade papers while he watched, a wry smile playing over her lips. But if he chose one she enjoyed, all the lights would go off on their side of the room, and she would sometimes slip a hand through the metal bars of his hospital bed and rest it on his forearm. Belle preferred drama, emotional intensity, and catharsis, and, although Nosty would have preferred a few more car chases and fiery explosions, he found he liked her hand on his arm in the dark even better.

An ugly bird stumbles closer while he distracts himself from memories of Belle by talking shite with his boys. He recognizes this one, with her boyish, close-cropped hair and slouchy clothes. Kaz is her name, and he sure as fuck knows what Kaz wants.

"Oi Nosty? You fancy doing any business tonight?" She's pished, of course, and slurring her words. Looks even worse than when last he saw her, if that's possible. Even _more_ broken somehow.

"I need a little something to keep me going, yeah?" Kaz explains without any shame, and that's one nice thing a bottle of gin will do for you. It takes away the shame, at least for a little while.

"Eh?" He replies, addressing not her, but rather the whole drunken lot of them: "Didya mind the shop while I was away, lads? Am I open for business?"

His boys loudly assure him that they fucking tended what needed tending and that he fucking _ought_ to be open for business, since it's well past time the boss got his fucking dobber wet after such a long absence.

"Have any money on you, _sweetheart?_ No, I didn't think so. So I suppose it depends…on whether you're prepared to pay _in kind." _

Nosty stands, looking over at her at last, raising his eyebrows and running his tongue slowly over his lower lip. Behind him, there is whooping and scattered applause.

Kaz's eyes go flat and glassy, but the bird nods once, saying, "Alright then, let's have a go. Where d'you want it, Nosty?" This is met with still more cheers. His boys do so love their dinner theatre, sometimes sans dinner.

He escorts the pathetic, strung-out little git a short ways off from the fire and gives her a rough push towards the wall. Kaz turns her back on him, tugging at her loose-fitting pants and bracing herself for a fast fuck against the underside of the bridge, but Nosty catches her by the wrist and spins her back around, speaking low and fierce: "I fancy a wank tonight, _lover._ Don't know where that fud of yours has been, now do I?"

Her face doesn't register relief or anger or embarrassment or any other emotion, but Kaz pulls up her pants with one hand and thrusts the other through the slit in Nosty's kilt.

Her touch is cold and clumsy and gruff.

Everybody knows Nosty likes it fucking rough.

His cock is shrunken and flaccid when she first grips him. There's nothing about this sorry-as-shite situation that arouses him: not her glassy, drunken stare; not the hard, quick, mechanical yanks she's giving him; not the sickly smell of stale liquor that's all around them. After a minute or so, her brow knits, and Nosty knows he cannot allow himself to remain soft much longer. He'll be fucked before he lets word get around that his cock is anything less than fully functional.

He focuses on the the fullness of the bird's cheeks, how they remind him just the slightest bit of Belle. Oh _fuck,_ there it is, the first twinge of movement from his uninterested cock. Beautiful Belle. He summons up her heart-shaped face, the swell of her breasts beneath her cashmere cardigans, her gleaming brown curls, and her posh little voice. Oh fuck, _yes,_ there it is, the blood pooling downwards and his desire coiling tightly and his sleepy cock coming to life.

_Oh yes,_ and there's one particular memory that will bring him off right quick. Oh _fuck, yes. _

That night…that night when some bint nurse he'd never laid eyes on before walked in with a tub of warm, sudsy water, determined to give him a fucking sponge bath.

"Gotten a bit stale in here, yeah?" she'd said cheerfully, then given the gauze covering his wrist a little tug, saying it likely should be changed, and that had fucking _hurt_…so bad that he had yowled like a puss with its tail caught in the door, and Belle…_oh Belle_…beautiful, perfect Belle had gotten so _angry_ at that…didn't like to see him hurting, and she had sent that nurse from the room and said, _oh God,_ she had said in her posh little voice, "We'll take care of this ourselves."

And then…_oh fuck,_ and then she had turned their movie back on, and while soldiers sprinted across a battlefield and landmines exploded she had wrung the warm water out of the washcloth and…oh, oh, _fuck_…she had begun with his neck…and he was so glad it was dark so that she wouldn't see his pulse racing beneath her fingers and the way his cock twitched beneath the thin hospital blanket.

And then…_oh God,_ and then after she'd finished with his neck, Belle had carefully washed behind both of his ears like a good little mother, gently tracing the shell of each ear with the warm cloth, and he didn't know…_oh God,_ he didn't realize what that would do to him.

He'd drawn his knees up then, tenting the blanket so she wouldn't see, but Belle must have known…she's _good,_ but she's not fucking stupid…and she hadn't stopped, had she? If anything, she took _more_ care with him after that, first tugging down one side of his hospital gown, then the other. Slipping the warm cloth up so gently beneath his arms, then down over his chest, grazing over his nipple and his ribcage. He'd kept his eyes on the movie, but hers were on the scars that decorated his pale skin.

"Poor Nosty," she whispered, "Poor Nosty," and, _oh,_ he liked that. He liked that so fucking much. He _liked_ being fussed over and soothed, as long as it was by her and no one else was around to hear it.

She'd done his arms next, careful of his injured wrist and careful to keep the washcloth comfortably warm. And then…_oh fuck,_ and then she'd reached out to straighten one of his legs, gently lifting the hospital blanket to his thigh. He'd kept the other leg bent, hiding the way his cock lay full and heavy against his stomach, but when Belle moved higher and higher, he thought he might come just from the warm, upward strokes along his inner thigh…_oh fuck, oh fuck…_

Cursing, Nosty spends himself in Kaz's rough hand, and she stumbles back, glad of the numbness born of gin and glad to be free of him.

When he's finally able to catch his breath, he rearranges his damp kilt and retrieves the bird's hard-earned stuff-and-all from his boys.

Afterwards, Nosty crawls into his regular Waterloo spot beneath a tented tarp, drawing his knees up tight and pressing his back to the cement wall. His stomach growls and he thinks maybe he should get up and go find something, but then that familiar, sick, _hollow_ feeling is clawing him back downwards, and he finds he doesn't care enough to move.

Nosty drifts into an uncomfortable, uneasy sleep, thinking of white bakery boxes and silver bracelets and Belle's beautiful, beautiful blue eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

If Nosty wasn't on a downswing, he might have managed to stay away.

But morning after morning, he wakes before sunrise to the same aching, heavy, _hopeless_ feeling in his mangled chest, and there's nothing for it. There's nothing to drink or to fight or to inject that will make a fucking shred of difference.

There isn't any way to arrest this descent once it's begun. Soon his thoughts will grow murky and run together in an endless loop: "Fucking hopeless. Fucking friendless. Fucking worthless."

Once a downswing takes hold of Nosty, it's only a matter of days until he'll need to crawl off somewhere and hole up, like some sick-as-shite animal nearing its end.

He doesn't want to eat. He doesn't want to fucking sell. He doesn't want to yell or front or collect.

The only thing Nosty wants is for his pretty bird to put her wrist against his cheek and then his forehead and to hear her softly tsk, "Poor Nosty. Poor Nosty," and then he wants to sleep and sleep and sleep until this wretched heaviness lifts, and he's able to _breathe_ once more.

The upswings are fucking fantastic, mind you. (At least until his thoughts begin to race ahead of him so fast he can't tell fact from fiction.)

But the downswings…

_Shite._

The downswings are fucking _terrible._

Anyhow, it isn't as if he's waiting here at Victoria Station on a crisp weekday morning to fucking _talk_ with Belle. He just likes to watch her when she's on her way to work, her tweed jacket belted tightly against the November chill and her heels clicking smartly over the sidewalk. It's easier to blend into the crush of Londoners here than in the posh neighborhoods surrounding Belle's flat. Over near Eaton Square, his hair and his dirty, ripped clothes draw stares. Near the Tube entrances, he's just one of the spattered, dreggy London masses.

Belle's running a bit behind schedule, and when at last Nosty spies her, all but jogging along Victoria Street in her haste to make the next train, he nearly gives himself away. _Jesus._ What the actual fuck is she wearing?

Her buttery leather boots with the low heel have been replaced by spiky, black patent pumps. Her wool skirt suit barely reaches below her jacket's hemline, and her hair, usually done up in a demure little half-twist, hangs in loose, windswept curls around her face.

And her _face_ — what has she done to it? His beautiful bird, always bare-faced until this morning, is wearing full makeup. Belle's bow-shaped mouth is a deep burgundy, and her eyes are smudgy and dark. It looks…oh _fuck_…it looks as though she's done up for a fucking _date._

Nosty may not know how the other half conducts their day-to-day, but a breakfast date in full makeup seems a bit…off. It doesn't seem like _Belle. _

And, _Christ,_ he'll be crawling out of his skin until he knows who the deep burgundy lips are intended for.

The thought of some rich fuck so much as buying her a bagel…well, _shite,_ it has him in a red haze.

Realizing that he's gone completely fucking daft, Nosty ducks his head and follows Belle down into the London Underground.

Belle jiggles her foot and cranes her neck, attempting to see where the waitress has hidden herself. Perhaps it would be best to simply walk up to the hostess's station and ask for the check? Seated next to the Cafe Rouge's expansive picture window, it appears they've been quite forgotten.

Beside her, Gerald happily inspects the bottom of his martini glass, contemplating three wet olives. It's his second martini, but, astonishingly, his _fourth_ luncheon cocktail. What most amazes Belle is the inebriated accuracy of his hand when he reaches over to rest it on her knee for the umpteenth time.

What an absolute ninny she was, thinking this might be a job interview in disguise.

Granted, Gerald _was_ her first and only beau at Cambridge, but he had mentioned a fiance during their recent phone call and then had gone on and on about his illustrious, swiftly expanding English faculty, and Belle had so _much_ wanted to believe she was being casually headhunted by her beloved alma mater.

In any case, she doesn't remember him _drinking_ like this while they were together. Or behaving so boorishly. Gerald is handsome as ever, of course, but a red latticework of veins has sprouted upon his Grecian nose since last she saw him. Belle pities his future wife.

"What was it we were just speaking of, Belle? Ah yes! 'A Room with a View!' Capital, capital film! The recurring theme of estrangement…the 'estranged social outsider.' And Mr. Day-Lewis's magnificent, restrained performance! Just altogether a capital, capital film!"

Gerald's eyes are now where his hand once was, Belle having gently but firmly removed it from her upper thigh.

She doesn't want to listen to any more of this stuffy, drunken pontificating. 'A Room with a View' was the final film she watched with Nosty, the evening before he was discharged from the hospital. As a result, she finds anything less than his passionate, ferocious conviction beyond tiresome.

_"They think they're talking about fucking freedom," Nosty had fumed as the credits rolled, "Acting it out little by little so that we can follow along and feel superior. But Forster didn't know __**fuck**__ about freedom. 'Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.' People with lives like this will __**never**__ come near it. They wouldn't know what to do with it if they fucking had it."_

_"You know, I would have turned the movie off straightaway if I'd realized you hated it," Belle had murmured, her fingertips tracing soothing patterns along the inside of his arm. "Why didn't you say something?" _

_He'd looked down at her hand, and his chest and neck flushed red with discomposure._

_"Thought maybe I could help you grade some of those papers," he'd said at last, looking away, and she'd let the conversation drop, but held onto him for awhile longer, unwilling to leave until he was drifting toward sleep._

Just who _is_ Nosty, exactly? A homeless man who quotes Sartre and rattles off words like 'schadenfreude?'

Intelligent, certainly. Angry and passionate, indisputably.

A man with bipolar disorder who eschews medication and repeatedly maims himself? Erratic and unstable, without question.

The truth of the matter is…she misses him. Terribly.

Belle has no comparison point in her sedate, academic life for Nosty. She only knows that Gerald's drunken fumbling and long-winded opining is made all the more irksome by the unfortunate fact that _he isn't Nosty._

Brushing the ever-wandering hand aside, Belle excuses herself to the loo and manages to capture the attention of the waitstaff. After the cheque is paid, there is an awkward, groping farewell hug at the table. Afterwards, Belle finds a polite excuse to hang back in the restaurant, not wanting to drag out this unsatisfactory reunion any longer than necessary.

"I'll look forward to reading your book, Gerald. Best of luck!" she calls to his back as he stumbles over the leg of a chair, rights himself, brushes off his expensive suit coat, and disappears out the cafe door with a little wave and as much dignity as his inebriation will allow him.

Belle sips her lukewarm tea, giving Gerald a head start, then slips on her knit gloves and exits the restaurant. Ducking her head against the biting November wind, she walks quickly back toward campus.

Less than a block from Cafe Rouge, in a dim alley off of Wellington Street, a flash of red fabric arrests her attention. She hears a muffled curse and a dull thud. Moving closer, Belle sees two men engaged in a furious struggle.

"You don't touch her!" Nosty snarls, slapping Gerald hard across the cheek, then jabbing a finger at his bloodied nose. "You don't even fucking _look_ at her, or I'll fucking blind you, ken?" Another hard, dull _thwack_ across the cheekbone.

Nosty has edged Gerald up against the alley wall, a box cutter to his throat.

_"Stop it,_ Nosty! _Stop it!"_ Belle runs toward them, dropping her purse and book bag onto the filthy asphalt. Heart pounding, she catches Nosty by the wrist, just below his dirty bandage, and yanks the blade away from Gerald's bobbing Adam's apple.

Nosty spins to face her, baring his teeth and brandishing his small, rusty weapon, as she stumbles back.

For the first time since they met, he sees horror and revulsion written across Belle's lovely face. She whispers his name, and he realizes he's frozen in place, his mind clouded by confusion and noxious, sickening shame. _Fucking hopeless. Fucking friendless. Fucking worthless._

Belle quietly tells a shivering Gerald to go, that she knows this man, and she'll handle this, and her old beau is either drunk enough or unchivalrous enough to obey her. He lurches off, hand to his bloody nose.

After a long silence, Belle exhales slowly and quietly remarks, "That was…disproportionate, Nosty."

She gingerly takes the box cutter from his hand, retracts the rusty blade, and tucks it back into his coat pocket.

"That bloke was fucking _pawing_ at you. You should have fucking slapped him, Belle" he mutters, looking anywhere but her face.

"Perhaps," she agrees, "but perhaps I made an allowance because he was well into his cups and because we're old friends from Uni. What do you think? Should I make an allowance for your temper, Nosty?"

Then, stepping closer, she sighs and asks softly, "Have you been following me?"

His tongue darts out nervously to wet his lips.

He's a first rate liar, of course, but he finds he doesn't have the stomach for it at this particular moment. He wants to explain himself, yes, but he can't do that properly either, not when they're nearly nose to nose. The burgundy gloss has rubbed off during her lunch, and Belle's lips are back to the natural shade of pale pink that twists his stomach in knots.

Nosty swallows hard, staring at her mouth, and then Belle shows some fucking mercy, reaching up to cradle his unshaven cheek in her fuzzy, gloved hand. He shuts his eyes for an incredulous second and hears her ask, softer yet, "How are you? Do you realize how much I've missed you?"

He groans, and it's a disgraceful, needy sound that escapes his throat before he can clench his jaw and bite his tongue against it.

Belle's other gloved hand reaches up to tenderly stroke his cheek.

And then he loses his fucking mind.

With a low, frantic snarl, Nosty crushes her tiny frame against his, stumbling backwards until his back collides with the brick wall.

He ducks his chin, his chapped, rough lips desperately seeking hers, and _oh, oh Christ,_ Belle's exquisite mouth is already open, ready to welcome him. Nosty's sharp teeth graze against hers, and his tongue traces her slippery gums, her full lower lip, the roof of her mouth, anywhere, _anywhere_ he can reach. And, _fuck,_ Belle tastes just as sweet as he imagined, like milky, honeyed tea and balmy summer heat and…and…like fucking _home. _He's never had any home but this: Belle's soft, parted lips and Belle's hands upon his cheeks and Belle's warm body pressed against his.

Nosty's fingers curl and dig into the small of her back beneath Belle's prim, tweed jacket, urgently pressing her hips flush with his, likely bruising her hipbones with his own lean, hard frame.

Nosty fucking _needs_ the relief of counter-pressure against his full, aching cock. He _needs_ Belle to feel his absolute desperation and his fucking hunger and to…and to…

He very nearly sobs her name when Belle tentatively brushes her hot, wet tongue over his. A soft, gloved hand slips behind his neck, underneath his long hair, and her other hand travels slowly downward, stopping and perching on his narrow waist.

"Sweetheart," she whispers, "Sweetheart…"

Nosty's quick, ragged breaths create small clouds in the chill, winter air. He hates the hoarse, unsteady voice he hears panting and pleading, "Don't make me fucking _beg,_ Belle…fucking _please_…"

And _Christ,_ she kisses him back with ferocious intensity then. The hand between his neck and the brick wall grips him tightly, and the hand perched at his waist sinks lower, slipping in between the woolen folds of his kilt and, and…_oh…oh fuck, _Belle is slowly tracing the length of him with one gloved finger.

He groans loudly into her mouth, his flickering tongue showing her, frantically, the rhythm he needs _now, _this fucking _moment,_ before he either comes or fucking _expires_ in this filthy alley.

"Oi! There he is! Behind the dumpster!"

The fire running through Nosty's blood turns to ice. It's the fucking coppers.

The handsy Englishman with the face like a well-skelped arse has returned with reinforcements, and Nosty will be _fucked_ before he spends any more time in the pen.

Cursing, he wrenches his shaking body out of Belle's warm arms and flees on foot, the coppers close behind.


	8. Chapter 6 Remix

The warm cloth and the steady, downward strokes over Nosty's chest aren't achieving the desired effect.

Belle wants this gentle, cleansing massage to soothe and relax him. She wants to blot out the memory of the nurse's indifferent, rough handling and to eventually ease him toward sleep.

A good night's sleep can be powerful medicine.

Instead, Nosty's eyes are wide and unblinking, fixed on the hospital telly, and his slim, wiry frame fairly _radiates_ tension. He looks as though he'd like nothing so much as to crawl out of his own pale, goose-pimpled skin.

During her first visit, Belle came to understand that he _hates_ to be touched unexpectedly. Sudden movements and unanticipated contact leave him quivering, fierce, and watchful, ready for fight or flight. Pity the nurse who wakes him from a sound sleep by checking an IV port or brushing against his bed.

On the other hand, she believes Nosty _has_ come to enjoy the soft, predictable press of her hand against his arm or his forehead. He no longer jerks beneath her fingers like a startled colt when she checks him for fever. Instead, his honey-brown eyes momentarily flicker shut, and he holds very, very still.

Surely the hands of a considerate friend are preferable to those of a callous, impatient, _insulting_ nurse? Belle still smarts on Nosty's behalf at the insinuation that he stinks. He just smells of sweat, is all. _Anyone_ would smell the same after being clammy with fever for days on end.

Perhaps it's the violent movie that's upsetting him. On the grainy telly, dying soldiers moan for their mothers and sergeants make heroic, doomed attempts to drag their wounded back to safety. It's a grisly, bloody, _noisy_ battle, but onscreen brutality never bothered him before. He's likely seen far worse in his own life.

"I can turn it off, if you'd rather," Belle offers, leaning close so that he'll be able to hear her over the film's gunfire and frantic, shouted dialogue. Her hair brushes over his bare shoulder, and Nosty sucks in his breath. She can feel the tremor run through him beneath the washcloth she has pressed to his ribcage.

"It's fine," he replies in a hoarse, clipped voice, "Leave it."

His bony knees are drawn up high, and his legs fall apart just a little as Belle makes slow, sweeping circles over his sunken stomach. She makes a mental note to bring snacks with her tomorrow morning. There must be _something_ that might tempt him to eat between meals. Nosty's much, much too lean. How on earth does a man so skinny manage to sleep out of doors in the wintertime? He must have something more than just his leather jacket?

Belle is careful to preserve what she can of his modesty, exposing only one side of his narrow chest at a time. With his worn, blue hospital gown tugged low, she can easily trace each of his prominent ribs with the warm cloth. Nosty fidgets restlessly on the bed, his eyes still firmly fixed on the movie.

The hospital staff evidently decided to remove the dirtied bandages from his chest while she was away teaching classes this afternoon. Above his pink, pebbled nipple, Belle counts at least six overlapping, circular scars.

Carefully slipping the washcloth in between his arm and his body, she tries to imagine what it must be like to impale your own chest with the jagged edge of a broken bottle.

Truly, it defies comprehension.

Leaving the cloth to soak in the sudsy basin of water, Belle traces around the edge of the faintest scar with a hesitant fingertip, openly staring.

"Poor Nosty," she whispers, fighting an impulse to touch her lips to the scabs covering the most recent angry, red circle, "Poor Nosty." His averted eyes flutter shut, and he exhales slowly, hands twisting nervously in the bedclothes. Another small tremor runs through him.

Tenderly, Belle covers his defaced chest with the hospital gown so that he won't catch a chill. She draws the blanket up also, tucking it snug around his narrow torso.

Next, she turns her attention to his wiry arms, wringing out the cloth and stroking from the top of Nosty's shoulder, all the way down to his bandaged wrist.

The blue light from the telly illuminates a constellation of smaller, round scars on his pale inner arm. Old cigarette burns, likely. Could he possibly be grinding out cigarettes on his own flesh? Or is this someone else's sadistic handiwork? A hard knot forms in her throat.

Unable and unwilling to control the impulse any longer, she ducks her head and brushes one, two, three light kisses along his pitiable forearm.

Cheeks flushed, Belle doesn't dare look to see how he takes this little demonstration. Instead, she infuses her touch with as much tenderness as she is able, gently straightening one of his drawn up legs and lifting the thin blanket to mid-thigh. She swallows hard when she sees more scars _here_ as well. A series of thin, white lines run parallel to Nosty's kneecap. They have a sickening, surgical precision, and she wonders what sort of blade he uses, her stomach turning over and over.

Giving up on the pretense of a bath, Belle drapes the warm cloth over his shin and gently kneads the sole of his foot. Nosty groans softly, his wary eyes finally skittering over to watch her as the film credits roll.

"Is this alright?" she murmurs, and he nods, working his lower lip over with his teeth.

Tension is still rolling off him in waves, so, a short while later, Belle reluctantly abandons Nosty's feet and retrieves the cloth. It's probably best that she finish quickly so he can rest.

With slow, steady swipes, she works her way up each leg, bearing his slight weight to lift and clean behind each calf. Nosty shifts beneath the blanket, breathing through his open mouth. Belle is amused to discover the backs of his knees are quite ticklish.

Hmm. The water in the basin had gone a bit gray.

Finished with his front, Belle rearranges the blanket and watches as he once more draws up both knees.

"Shall I stop there so you can get some rest?" she offers quietly.

"Isn't much left of me to wash, now is there?" he replies with a breathy little laugh. It's a weak attempt at humor, and his teeth are very nearly chattering. _Poor Nosty._

"Only your back," Belle agrees, and his tongue darts out to wet his lips.

Closing his eyes, Nosty begins to roll onto his stomach.

"Wait a moment." Belle retrieves a flat hospital pillow from a nearby chair, using it to prop and cushion Nosty's chest so that he isn't lying directly on his lacerations.

From a brass hook on the back of the door, she fetches her cashmere scarf and rolls it into a little bundle for him to rest his sunken cheek upon. Tomorrow, she must remember to ask one of the nurses for a razor and shaving soap. His whiskers are quite overgrown.

"It's alright to fall asleep, sweetheart," she says, the endearment slipping from her tongue before Belle can think better of it. He didn't at all like hearing it the first time. Quite nearly bit her head off.

"I'm just going to ask for a fresh basin of water from the nurses' station. I'll be back in a few minutes." Leaving the door slightly ajar, Belle wanders into the hallway, carefully balancing the water. She can see from this distance that no one is at the little desk where nurses congregate during their shifts. Perhaps they wear pagers?

Best to just go back and push the little button on Nosty's bed.

Slipping silently back into the dark room, Belle halts and her lips form a startled little "oh!"

Nosty's angular face is half-buried in her scarf. He is taking deep, hurried breaths: in through his nose, out through his open mouth, as if he wants to consume it.

He rocks and struggles against the hospital bed, his uninjured hand tucked beneath the blanket. Thrusting urgently into his palm, his brow is deeply furrowed, his nostrils are flared, and the jerky movements of his hips are increasingly frantic.

Belle's scarf muffles most of the soft, breathless, straining noises that escape his open mouth, but, in a matter of seconds, his movements become more convulsive, and she hears him groan, _"Fuck! Ah! Oh—fuck!" _

The sight of his bucking hips and the perfect curve of his small, shaking arse beneath the thin hospital blanket is far and away the most erotic thing Belle has ever seen.

With a muffled gasp and a final _"Ah—fuck!"_ she sees his face contort beautifully and his body spasm. Gradually, the shaking subsides, and Nosty's breathing slows. Belle watches the tension seep from his back and shoulders. His cheeks are nicely flushed, and his eyes are closed. At last, he looks at though he really could fall asleep.

Oh, it's little wonder Nosty needs this. A man in his twenties? There's probably precious little privacy while sleeping on the streets of London. Perhaps he wishes she'd leave a bit sooner in the evenings so he can steal a little time for _this._

Belle leaves and waits a full five minutes before re-entering the room.

Nosty's eyes are still closed, and he looks as though he's utterly at peace, his face buried in her soft scarf.

Sitting gingerly beside him on the bed, Belle strokes the back of his hair, and Nosty grumbles happily. She sweeps his locks up and away from his neck, then over the side of his shoulder again and again, letting them fall, and he sighs, contented.

Tenderly, Belle folds the blanket down to expose his sinewy back, and she sucks in her breath, seeing yet more scars. These are larger, longer, scattered across his skin like strokes from a thick switch or leather belt. These she is certain he didn't inflict upon himself.

Not bothering with the lukewarm cloth, she simply traces her fingertips up and down Nosty's spine and watches the slow rise and fall of his breathing.

Her Shakespeare students are currently dissecting Othello, and a line from the tragedy has just now taken up residence in her brain: "She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them." She lets it run in a loop, finding meaning where previously the sentiment fell flat.

Belle hears herself asking quietly: "I overheard a nurse say you don't medicate. Why?" It's wrong of her to ask it when Nosty is in this hazy state between sleep and waking, but Belle cannot bring herself to retract the question. She wants to know him better.

"Lithium…clouds my mind. It isn't safe…out there, you need to be sharp." He answers readily enough, burrowing deeper against her scarf.

Suddenly tired herself, Belle brushes a kiss over his still-flushed cheek and whispers, "Goodnight, Nosty."


	9. Chapter 8

The constable's pen is poised in midair. Underneath an official-looking black cap, her brow is knit with motherly concern.

She has seated Belle in the backseat of her warm response car, and the two women sit knee-to-knee, the constable patiently waiting for Belle to describe "the incident" in the alley. Gerald is standing a ways off, giving his statement to a less sympathetic male sergeant, an embroidered linen handkerchief pressed to his bloody nose.

"He cannot hurt you now, dear," the constable says kindly, laying a warm hand on top of Belle's shaking knee, and for a surreal moment Belle believes she is speaking of poor, rattled Gerald. Of course Gerald can't hurt her! Belle can manage his moist, wandering hands quite easily!

"They'll catch him. You'll see, dear. Sergeant Philips has never lost a man in a foot race."

_Oh._ Of course. They'll catch _Nosty. _With a painful little lurch, Belle realizes the kind constable is under the impression that the embrace in the alley wasn't consensual, that it was, rather, an _assault. _

Best she unstick her well-kissed tongue before today spirals entirely out of control.

"What happens if they catch him?" Belle asks, her voice high and anxious and not entirely under her control.

"Well, that depends on you and your dapper friend, dear. If the two of you bring charges, he'll spend the weekend in a jail cell and stand before the judge early next week. But he'll _never_ find out where you live, and he'll never lay a hand on you again, promise you that."

The constable gives Belle's knee a reassuring little pat.

"He's—he didn't…he's my…he's a _friend."_

The constable's eyes widen slightly at this improbable assertion, but she remains silent, waiting for Belle to elaborate. How to make things clear to her? What to say and what to leave out?

"I met him while my brother was in hospital." The words tumble out: "He wasn't hurting me, before…in the alley, he was—it was…welcome." She forces herself to keep her gaze steady, meeting the other woman's searching, grey eyes. "He thought he was…protecting me."

"Gerald," Belle gestures out the car window, "the dapper one, he's an old acquaintance from university, and when Nos—…when my _friend_ saw him become a bit too forward with his hands during lunch, he…lost his temper. It was more of a lovers' quarrel than anything else. I'm very sorry. We shouldn't have involved the police."

The constable finishes scribbling this jumbled account on a little notepad, then regards Belle's flushed cheeks, tapping her pen against her teeth. Considering.

"So this…'friend' of yours, you're in a relationship with him?"

"Of a sort, yes ma'am." Belle remembers the rough and hungry kiss, Nosty's wild eyes and his labored breathing, the way he had shivered and nearly lost his footing when she slipped her fingers through the opening of his kilt. _Oh lord,_ if she could only dissolve into this seat and disappear. Where ever had she found the _courage?_

"Does your friend have a name, dear? Do you know where we might find him?" The constable raises her eyebrows, pen at the ready.

Belle is startled to realize that her first impulse is to lie to the woman. To give her a false name. Did James's death truly teach her _nothing?_ She had piled lie upon lie for her addicted brother: lied to his boss, lied to Matthew and Mary, lied to their friends, and, of course, lied to herself. Little good it had done him.

"His name is Nosty, ma'am. I don't know his surname or where he sleeps."

The constable makes a strangled noise upon hearing "Nosty" and hastily excuses herself to go and speak with the sergeant outside. They whisper, huddled together, casting covert glances over their shoulders at the backseat of the service car.

Gerald is led away to have his injuries photographed and cataloged, and suddenly Belle feels decidedly ill. She opens the door and calls out to the constable, "May I…may I go now, ma'am?"

Startled, the woman agrees, "Yes dear, I think we have everything we need for the moment, and I have your mobile number. Are you quite certain you're alright?"

"Quite certain," Belle lies, fighting a powerful need to retch. She looks over to Gerald, who is staring dolefully at the camera as it flashes away. "Gerald! Please call me?" Belle mimes a telephone pressed to her ear. Gerald signals his agreement with a sad little wave of his bloody hanky.

During the brisk walk home, Belle phones the university to cancel her afternoon class. Her Shakespeare students will be sorely disappointed. They have only just reached Desdemona's death scene and are eager to have a desk-pounding discussion of who is to blame. Othello is almost universally reviled this semester, and it's interesting to observe the ebb and flow of student opinion on his jealousy and culpability.

Inside her snug flat at last, Belle tumbles onto her overstuffed sofa with her jacket still on and promptly falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Hours later, the sound of her cell phone jangling inside her pocket wakes Belle abruptly. Her flat is nearly dark, so it must be past six.

"Gerald?" Her tongue is dry, and her voice is no more than a squeak.

"They caught him, Belle! He didn't even make it more than a block. They want us to come down to Belgravia Police Station to ID the blighter!"

Belle is suddenly very much awake. It sounds as though Gerald has continued the drinking he began at lunchtime.

"Listen to me. Gerald,_ listen._ I don't want you to press charges."

He snorts into his phone, a very ungenteel little sound. Oh yes, he is well past drunk. "And why the bloody hell _wouldn't_ I press charges, Belle?"

She gathers her strength. If tears are needed, Belle isn't above using them, but, for now, she holds her voice steady: "Because of James, Gerald."

"What rubbish are you talking? What does your brother have to do with any of this?" There is a loud clatter. It seems he has dropped his phone.

"Gerald? Are you there? He's _dead,_ Gerald. He died. Three weeks ago. I didn't tell you over lunch because…it didn't seem to be the right time, and I didn't want to blubber in front of everyone in the restaurant…"

"God, Belle, James is _dead?" _He sounds nearly sober now. Gerald always got on well with her younger brother.

"Of an overdose. Yes. But please…" Belle's voice wobbles, and she lets it. It's honest grief, and perhaps it will help Nosty. "…before he died, he got into trouble like this. So much trouble. Brawling. Theft. Run-ins with the police. I'm trying to help this man as a way of honoring James, and…he won't get the help he needs in prison. Please Gerald. Go home. Sleep it off. Let this be my decision. For James and the second chances he'll never get. _Please." _

He considers silently while Belle holds her breath. "If that's really how you want to handle this," Gerald says at last, _"God,_ Belle, I'm so bloody sorry. _James._ You should have said something. There I was, rattling on about my bloody book…"

_"Thank you,_ Gerald! Thank you! I'm so very sorry about your nose. I have to go! Thank you! Goodbye!" Belle struggles to tug her boots on as she talks. She'll need her checkbook for bail, her gloves, her scarf…

Her heart is racing.

It's time to rescue Nosty.


	10. Chapter 9

_"Oi!_ Nosty! On your feet, son!"

The guard gives his keys a self-important jangle and makes a show of sliding open the cell door. In the far corner, Nosty crouches on his heels, his lower back pressed against the cold cinder block wall, his forehead resting on his outstretched arms.

His thoughts are muddled, his skull fucking aches, and he cannot—_he cannot_—do this again. He cannot bear to be trotted down the dingy hallway, nor to be led into the little room with the flickering fluorescents and the one-way mirror. He cannot bear to face front and then sideways beside four other no-count, peedy bastards while being silently scrutinized and then, ultimately, discarded.

He just fucking _can't_ anymore, yeah?

But now the guard is nudging him with the tip of his shiny, black boot, and Nosty won't let that stand, not even while he's in this sorry state, so he makes to elbow the cunt in his tatties, but instead finds himself pulled roughly to his feet. He sways, lightheaded from hunger, but he'll be _fucked_ before he asks these Sasunnach bastards for one of their stale bologna sandwiches.

"You fancy a doin'? Keep yer fucking hands to yourself, ya buftie!" Nosty yanks his arm lose and saunters to the open door of the cell, tears stinging the backs of his eyes. _Fuck_ that hurt. Copper got hold of his bad wrist.

They begin the long walk down the dim, dreary corridor.

He's thrown when the guard pauses at the front desk, and then he's fucking stunned when a waiting constable folds his arms over his substantial belly, rocks back on his heels, and announces, "Looks as though today's your lucky day, Nosty. You made bail, you fortunate son of a bitch."

The constable hands over his beat-up leather jacket, and a quick sweep of the pockets confirms the coppers have nicked his blade. Fuck it. Blades are easy enough to come by. A free ticket out of prison isn't.

_"Nosty."_

Rising from a wobbly, plastic chair, out in the lobby beyond the scratched plexiglass enclosing the front desk, is his beautiful bird. Her curls are mussed, and her face is pale, and her tweed jacket is buttoned up the wrong way, but, _fuck,_ she's a welcome sight. Belle's staring back at him like she's afraid he'll up and vanish if she so much as blinks.

The whites of her lovely, long-lashed eyes have gone a delicate shade of pink, and Nosty realizes abruptly that these unshed tears are for _him._ She's here for _him._

An officer escorting a sorry-looking bloke in handcuffs pushes his way into the back room, and Belle follows fast on his heels.

_"Nosty!" _

She runs the last three steps, and then she's got her arms wrapped tight around his waist and her cheek pressed against his dirty t-shirt. Her narrow shoulders begin to shake, and he realizes she's crying tears of relief because she's fucking holding onto _him._

_"Hey._ Hey, Belle. There's no need for that, yeah?" Nosty ducks his head so that he's speaking right into her soft, sweet-smelling hair. This conversation isn't for the entertainment of the fucking dobbers working in this shite joint. It's only for him and her. "It's fine. I've been to jail lots of fucking times."

She laughs a little at that, and it's the prettiest wee sound. Belle tips her head back to look at him, wiping at her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her jacket, and the sweetest smile crinkles her blue eyes. That smile belongs to _him,_ and it loosens something hard and tight and hurting inside his chest.

"Oi! Miss! You ain't supposed to be back here!" An indignant guard shoos them out into the police station lobby. Still smiling, Belle helps him on with his old, beat-up jacket, and afterwards Nosty tucks her under his arm and leads her out the glass door and down the slippery cement steps. The night air is bracingly baltic and is full of swirling snow.

"Was I expensive?" he asks when they reach the unshoveled sidewalk. He wants to hear that chiming, wee laugh again.

"Quite," Belle answers, obliging him with a chuckle and matching his quick, long strides. "You cost an impressive six hundred pounds. You're awfully valuable, Nosty."

"Aye," he agrees. And it _does_ make him feel pretty fucking valuable, having a matchless lass like this burrowing beneath his arm on a cold, winter night. Belle just looks so fucking elated and, even though his dark, murky thoughts still threaten, and even though Nosty knows this downswing will win out in the end—_it always fucking does_—at this particular moment, he feels undamaged. Safe.

After a block, his empty stomach makes itself known with an emphatic growl, and Belle says lightly, "I slept through supper. Will you keep me company while I have a hamburger?"

He's always amenable to hamburgers, so they make their way through the quickly accumulating snow to nearby Victoria Station and its underground assortment of sandwich shops and greasy chip joints.

Nosty reserves them a grimy little table while Belle purchases a large sackful of hamburgers. He wipes off the filthy laminate tabletop with his sleeve, watching the way the weary cashier cannot help but return Belle's luminous smile. His bird is an actual fucking angel.

Nosty wolfs down the first three sandwiches in silence, barely chewing, tossing his wrappers on the ground, and he only pauses when Belle offers him a paper napkin and a slice of warm apple pie from a little cardboard container she hid away in the bottom of the burger bag.

"Someday soon, I'll make you the real thing," she promises, her blue eyes dancing. Nosty doesn't trust himself to reply, so instead takes the plastic fork she's holding out to him and burns his tongue on the first sugary bite of crust and fruit. _Fuck_ it tastes good.

It's real fucking nice, down here in the Underground. It's warm and dry, people pay you no mind, and there are far stranger sights than a posh lass sharing food with a hackit waster such as himself. Scraping up the remaining pie filling with his finger, Nosty imagines bringing Belle back here someday when he has a little money in his pocket. He'll buy _her_ the sandwich next time, and maybe they can talk a little about her classes and her students, just like they did while he was in hospital.

"Aw, _fuck yeah!_ Pure magic! It's fucking Nosty! _Oi!_ Nosty!"

Three chancy looking men in filthy, oversized coats are walking quickly toward their table.

"Lookit the state a' ya, Nosty! What the feck are ye doin' down here, ya radge bastard? Who's this, then?"

Nosty's on his feet straightaway, hissing at a wide-eyed Belle, "Don't be feert, love. It's just some fucking jakeys out on the prowl for a party. I'll send them on their way quick enough." He heads the wasters off only a few feet from their table, tossing back his hair and shoulders, putting on the old swagger, and directing them to his boys beneath Waterloo.

Once the trio's a good ways off, Nosty exhales and turns back to Belle. She has also risen to stand.

"You sell drugs." It isn't a question, just a bald statement of fact.

The dancing light in her eyes, present just minutes before while Belle was watching him gobble his meal like a fucking savage, has been extinguished. That dreaded, anxious loop returns, crowding out all other possible thought: Fucking hopeless. Fucking friendless. Fucking worthless. _Fuckinghopelessfuckingfriendlessfuckingworthless._

Not this. Not _this_ shite while she's staring at him like he's some fucking stranger.

Nosty yells just so he can hear himself over the inner clamor: "Aye! _Aye, that's fucking right I sell!_ Just what the actual fuck were you thinking? That I squat out on Piccadilly day after day, holding a wee cardboard sign? 'Please help the homeless?'"

He's panting, frantic, pacing.

_"Fuck,_ Belle, what did you think I was? A decent bloke down on his luck? I've been selling since I was fucking _twelve."_

Now he's pounding the heels of his hands against his temples, trying to silence the inner racket. Nosty can feel the wetness seeping through the bandage wrapped round his wrist, but he's powerless to stop now lest the despondent loop pull him under. _Fucking hopeless. Fucking friendless. Fucking worthless._

"I'm a fucking _waste,_ Belle! I'll _always_ be a fucking waste. Did you really think you'd give this stray dog a bath, a little scratch behind the ears, toss me a few treats, and then I'd be licking your palm and trotting along to work and taking the fucking high road? _Fuck no. Fuck that."_

Darkness is crowding the corners of his vision, so Nosty doesn't catch the exact moment when Belle closes the distance between them and wraps her arms around his spare, shaking ribcage. At first, he barely registers the gentle hand that reaches up to stroke the coarse whiskers on his clammy cheek, nor the other hand that slips underneath his jacket to soothe and steady him. It's not until Belle's warm lips brush over his again and again, murmuring "Shhh…shhh…shhh…" that Nosty is able calm himself enough to stop speaking.

"I _will_ tell you what I see when I look at you," Belle promises, once he's at last silent and still, transfixed by the tender, rhythmic brush of her lips over his, "And it's certainly not a stray dog. But not _here,_ Nosty. Not with an audience."

Dazed, he glances up and realizes that his tirade has drawn a small, concerned crowd of commuters.

Belle takes him firmly by his good hand, and leads him away from prying eyes, up the Tube escalator, into the hushed night air. Looping an arm tightly through his, she speaks quietly as she leads him the scant few blocks to her elegant flat on Eaton Square.

"When I look at you, Nosty, I see _courage._ More courage than most people could ever aspire to. You've survived where nearly all would simply…disintegrate."

Her words help, they really fucking do, but what he needs right now is to find some way to scrape this muck out of his head and chest. He wants to be clear for her, not mute and muddled and aching. He wants to be whole and brave, just like she says.

They've come to Belle's red, glossy front door with its festive little wreath, and she seems reluctant to release him long enough to unlock it.

Previously, (when Nosty allowed himself to imagine this moment at all, doing his damnedest to fall asleep beneath his jacket and his torn, waterproof tarp) he'd imagined it very differently. But there isn't any time to stop and reflect on it now. Belle's already walking inside, shrugging off her coat and switching on the lamps.

She turns back, realizing straightaway he hasn't followed close behind, and returns to the doorway. Belle reaches out, takes his arm, and pulls him in. She locks the door behind them and takes off his jacket like a good little hostess, glancing down at his scraggy, narrow chest.

Nosty sees himself as he imagines she sees him in that moment: skinny and paltry, wearing naught but a ripped, manky t-shirt and a blanket wrapped round his waist that he persists in calling a kilt. There's an angry buzzing in his ears, and suddenly he's snarling: "Is this what you fucking want, _sweetheart?"_ He grabs for her dainty waist, fingernails digging into Belle's soft, generous hips, pressing himself against her. "You wanna get fucked fast and rough against the wall by a radge waster? That it, love?"

He slides his dirty hands down below her plump, perfect little arse and picks her up—_it's so fucking easy; Belle's so fucking wee_—hauling her over to her tidy, polished little dining room table and dumping her down upon it. She grips his shoulders, not letting go.

"Is this what you fucking want, Belle?" he asks again, hating himself for sounding less fierce, less certain. She's twined her arms behind his neck, and her breath comes hot and quick against his throat, but Belle's blue eyes are cautiously searching his face. Just what is it she's fucking looking for? It makes him want to crawl out of his skin, being scrutinized like this. _Fuck._

At last she says, "Is this what _you_ want, Nosty?" gently tugging him nearer, resting her forehead against his, and…and he doesn't mean to say it, but he _does_ say it, he fucking _does,_ it just comes tumbling out:

_"I want to fucking disappear, Belle."_

She makes a soft, tender, pitying sound, deep in her throat, and leans in to kiss him. It's a gentle kiss. A fucking thorough kiss. Her hand slips up to tangle in his locks, clutching him close, and then Belle kisses him over and over and over, first his mouth, savoring it, but then his eyelids, his pale cheeks, his pointed chin, his sharp nose, everywhere, everywhere her pliable, warm lips can reach.

"Sweetheart," she murmurs, her voice so fucking sweet it feels as thought his heart is going to break in fucking two, and then Belle is slipping down off the gleaming table, twisting him around so that it's him who's pressed against it. She's carefully, tenderly undoing the rusted safety pin that holds his threadbare, red kilt in place, and she's spreading it open behind him on the tabletop, leaving him vulnerable and bare, and then…and then, _oh fuck,_ she's sinking to her knees in front of him.

Belle kisses his pale thighs first: just a feather-light greeting while her hands sweep up to grasp the backs of his lean legs. He's glad of the table then, groaning when her lips move ever closer to his hardening cock, going weak in the fucking knees, supporting his slight weight with his trembling arms.

"Oh, _oh fuck_ Belle!" He's gripping the edge of the table, his dry, cracked knuckles going white, gritting his teeth, and then she's taking him in her moist, hot, welcoming mouth before he's fully erect, able to take fucking _all_ of him, and able to bathe the underside of his eager, twitching cock with her warm, lapping tongue.

Nosty's had his knob-end polished hundreds of times before, mostly in lieu of payment, but it's always been a fucking rush to the finish, yeah? No one's ever lightly kneaded the backs of his legs, right up to the crease under his arse, nor suckled on the tip of him till he's ready to scream and weep from it, nor scraped her teeth so gently along the full length of him. Oh…_oh, oh fuck, yes!_

Belle's fucking worshiping him, and Nosty can't smother the shameful, frantic grunting and the loud, greedy groans when she dips her head lower to trace the crease between his balls with the tip of her wet, searing tongue. _Oh, oh fuck_…his balls are getting the same treatment as his cock, and _no one's_ done this for him before. _No one's_ taken his sack into the warm cavern of her mouth, licking and suckling until he's fucking babbling and begging her to help him come.

_"Please,_ Belle, fucking _now_ Belle…"

So his beautiful bird kisses the tip of him and reaches up to fondle his slick, wet balls with her delicate, manicured hand, and then she wraps the warm fingers of her other hand around the base of his curved, full, throbbing cock, moving her hot mouth and tongue over the head of him until he's shouting _"Fuck—fuck—fuck—Belle…fuck…!"_ and scrambling at her shoulders to push her away while he jerks and pulses.

Belle holds fast to his quaking hips and spasming arse, licking and suckling until the last tremor has gone through him, and then Nosty allows himself to collapse to the parquet floor, hiding his flushed, slack face behind the curtain of his hair.

She's telling him something, gentle and low, but he can't make it out over the rush of blood in his ears and the violent pounding of his heart. Belle's kissing his shoulder, over and over, and shrugging off her crumpled, wool suit coat, offering: "Come here. Come here to me, sweetheart."

She takes his shaking hands in hers and pulls him gently to stand, leading him to her large, deep sofa. He feels like a fucking newborn fawn, almost tripping over his own unsteady legs.

Belle lays down on her back first, then opens her arms to him—his manky t-shirt, sunken chest, bare arse, and all—and he gratefully sinks into her embrace, hiding his face against her silk blouse and sighing when she covers him with a fleecy throw blanket. Her heart is beating fast too, and Nosty savors the feel of her hand moving in long, slow strokes over his hair and back.

"I came looking for you," she tells him after some time has passed, tracing his knobby spine through his shirt. "I walked through Trafalgar Square and Picadilly and St. James on my lunch breaks. I thought maybe I'd be able to find you that way, but this city's so big. I realized I was being foolish, but I couldn't stop." He feels Belle's soft lips and warm breath against the top of his head. "I was so frightened I wouldn't see you again."

He shuts his eyes, because, after all, who is _he_ to have a quality person like Belle searching after him and cradling him close once she finds him? He's just a fucking dealer. A no-count waster. A right bastard.

He growls weakly and mouths her chest through her low-cut silk blouse, trusting this animal show of fidelity more than any spoken declaration he could offer her.

Nosty nips and nuzzles and sucks her little breast through the thin, expensive fabric, and she strokes his head, clutching and encouraging him. His rough hands grip her back, and Nosty chances a love bite on the fleshy underside of her chest. Belle sighs heavily, gathering him closer to mouth and lick, and when her blouse is damp through, she hastily tugs it down, offering him her rosy little nipple to lap and suck.

It's many long minutes before these tender creature comforts and his free license to taste Belle has Nosty hardening between her thighs. She holds him even closer when she feels him stiffening, and then, when the tugging at her nipple becomes more urgent, and his love bites become harder and more feral, and when Nosty begins to move restlessly against her, she whispers, "Come inside me, sweetheart," spreading her legs wide for him and tugging her wet, lacy knickers to one side.

He hardly needs to move to push into her, and Nosty meets no resistance at her slick, silky entrance—she's been damp and ready for him for quite some time.

Belle's mouth falls open, and she gives a soft little cry when he easily slides home, all the way up to the root of his cock.

She arches and struggles and quakes, and, after four quick, hard thrusts, she whimpers, digging her fingernails into his back, not even needing his fingertips to push her over the edge.

Belle wraps her trembling limbs around him afterwards, whispering endearments while he ruts against her: "love," and "yes sweetheart," and "oh, Nosty" and then, nearly there, hardly thinking, he grinds out, "That's not…that's not my fucking name, _oh fuck,_ Belle…!" and collapses against her, burying his face in her sweet, satin neck and biting her there, as well.

Drifting off, snug beneath the blanket and utterly empty, he hears Belle ask from faraway, "What _is_ your name?"

"Nevermind it," Nosty murmurs, burrowing closer, sinking into what he hopes will be a dreamless sleep.


	11. Chapter 10

Belle's hand rests in the valley between Nosty's sharp shoulder blades, rising and falling with every ragged breath he takes. His left hand tightly fists the fabric of her blouse at her waist, and his right has crept upwards to tangle in her hair.

He jerks and mutters in his sleep, lost to strange, unfathomable dreams.

Although the tension flowed out of him the moment Nosty spent himself inside her, his heartbeat continues to race ahead of hers, and his eyelids clench and flicker. Even in sleep, even within the warm embrace of a lover who whispered, _"sweetheart"_ and _"stay"_ over and over until he succumbed to his exhaustion, even then—Nosty is vigilant. Belle suspects the slightest noise or the smallest movement will wake him.

It is bliss to feel his slight, shuddering form draped over her chest while he sleeps. It is bliss to feel the steady rise and fall of his shoulders and to know that he is warm and dry beneath her blanket on this snowy November night. It is heavenly to feel his surprisingly soft, woolly head tucked beneath her chin and to twine her naked legs with his beneath the fleece.

Belle recognizes the raw, bittersweet ache within her chest when he flinches and groans in his sleep—_love._

She loved him a little, before, guarding his uneasy slumber in the hospital, and now—now he has her _heart._ His unshaven cheek is pressed flush against it, shifting and sighing heavily, breathing through his open mouth.

It's _love_ Belle feels when she oh-so-carefully sweeps aside the locks that have fallen across his angular face, and it's _love_ she feels when she discovers that a hand gently stroking and cradling the crown of his head eases him back toward sleep.

These are Belle's last thoughts before sinking into her own strange dreams: _"I carry your heart…I carry your heart…"_

When she wakes, the clock on her kitchen wall reads "4:13 AM," and her arms are empty. The blanket is tucked snugly beneath her hips and up over her shoulders, but the lovely weight of him is gone, and for a moment she is in an awful panic, believing she's lost him once again.

But then—a flash of red arrests her attention, over in the dim corner near the bookshelves, and—_oh, thank God_—it's him. Nosty is examining her large collection of family photographs, displayed in ornate crystal frames upon her mahogany side table and also along the sturdy, built-in shelves. He's fully dressed, his dark hair and leather jacket fading into the predawn shadows, and his kilt is once again pulled taut around his narrow waist.

"You're fucking minted," he says dully, not bothering to look over at her, and she would call it an accusation if his voice weren't so dreadfully hollow and lifeless. "Adjunct professors can't afford three-bedroom flats overlooking the fucking Gardens."

He picks up an oval picture frame and stares at it. From its shape, Belle knows what it is he's seeing: her arms draped affectionately around each of her brothers' necks. The trio is dressed in their natty, black and white Westminster uniforms. The photograph was taken on her first day of sixth form.

"No, adjunct professors cannot," Belle agrees. "This flat belonged to my grandmother. The money was hers as well."

She wraps the blanket around her shoulders and crosses the room to stand beside him.

Reaching for a rectangular frame engraved with white dahlias, Belle points to a handsome young woman with flyaway curls and serious, gray eyes. "She was an inventor. An eccentric. She made her fortune registering patents, but barely spent a shilling on herself aside from this flat. She loved to walk in the Gardens. Her name was Isabelle. My namesake."

"When she died, the inheritance passed to my father, and soon after it came down to us." Belle gently plucks the picture of herself and her brothers from Nosty's hand. "Matthew and I used it mainly for our schooling. Cambridge costs a pretty penny. But James…"

She draws a shaky breath. "Sudden wealth isn't necessarily a blessing."

Nosty laughs at this unlikely conjecture, an ugly, scornful little sound, and Belle carefully places the picture back on the side table.

"Come to bed?" she asks quietly, clutching the blanket close and reaching up to touch his shoulder. "It's much more comfortable than the couch."

He stares at her small, white hand, stark against his black jacket, and unconsciously works his jaw. His brow is knit, and his expression is pained. At last, shaking his head, Nosty replies in a low voice: "Things are about to get extremely fucking maudlin, Belle. It's best I go."

Feeling her grip tighten instinctively on his shoulder, he tries again: "I'm a—I'm a fucking Greek tragedy waiting to happen tonight, love. Soon I'll be rending my garments and beating my fucking breast. Ah, _hell._ I'm on a fucking downswing, Belle. You don't need to see this shite, yeah?"

She breathes easier, knowing that it's only shame that's edging him out her door and not regret for the intimacy they shared earlier. Tenderly catching up his hand, Belle presses a careful kiss to the inside of his injured wrist.

"Please stay," she urges, then leads him, unresisting, by the hand down the dark hallway to her bedroom overlooking the snow-covered Gardens. Though it's already approaching five o'clock, the crescent moon shines brightly through Belle's large, arched windows, illuminating the gleaming wood floor and the downy, white duvet covering her bed.

"Please stay," she whispers as she eases the battered leather jacket off of his shoulders and carefully drapes it over the back of an elegant, upholstered armchair. "Stay, Nosty," she whispers as she slips her arms around his narrow waist and draws him close, resting her cheek against his ripped cotton t-shirt.

Belle listens to the thudding of his heart for what feels like many long minutes, and then—at last—Nosty is tugging the ratty shirt up over his head and afterwards pressing her tightly to his pale, ruined chest.

It could be Belle's imagination or the late hour, but she thinks she feels lips brushing back and forth over her hair and the whisper of warm breath against her forehead. Yet, when she tips her head back to claim those lips, Nosty hastily extracts himself from her arms and crawls onto her large bed, wearing nothing but his threadbare kilt and shabby wool socks.

It's strange, the way he lays himself down lengthwise, his back pressed to the solid, maple headboard and his knees drawn up to his stomach. He pushes the plump feather pillows aside and draws the duvet up to cover his head and wiry body.

Should she go to him? Is she welcome within his dark, stuffy cavern of sheets and blankets?

Belle suspects the answer is complicated. Likely, she isn't entirely welcome, but she's _needed,_ nonetheless.

After hurriedly scrubbing her face and brushing her teeth, Belle changes into her softest flannel bottoms and a well-worn cotton pullover. Tentatively, she burrows beneath the bedclothes, cautious of waking him should he have already drifted into sleep.

He has not.

The scant light that creeps in around the edges of the white duvet reveals his brown eyes to be wide and unblinking. He is fed and warm and safe…and he looks absolutely wretched.

Belle slips her warm palm into his and whispers against his dry, cracked knuckles: "This bed is yours, sweetheart. I'll have a key made for you tomorrow. Whenever you want to sleep somewhere warm and safe, day or night, this bed is yours. This flat is yours."

He shuts his eyes.

"The food in the cupboards, the wine in the rack, the washer and dryer, the books on the shelves, the telly…it's _yours_ Nosty, all of it. You're _safe_ here. I know it cannot stop the…the peaks and valleys, but…"

His eyes fly open at the word 'safe,' and his thin lips draw back to reveal his sharp, white teeth. This expression could easily pass as scorn, but his downturned mouth and glassy stare give him away: this is grief. His face is twisted by grief.

"I'm tucked up safe in your snug little flat, eh?" His voice is dull, but Nosty grips her hand tighter. "I've had homes before. So many I fucking lost count."

He laughs quietly, and Belle has never heard a sound so mirthless and hurting.

_"Fuck_ 'safe.' I thought I was safe in the last house I lived in. Foster mum seemed like a real sweet lady. She looked after the three other wee bastards she'd taken into care real nice. Even bought us new school clothes with the stipend; most of 'em didn't bother with that, but she did. Fixed our meals, did the baths…"

His too-long fingernails are digging into the fleshy part of her palm, and his eyes are pinpricks of light in the stifling dark beneath the blankets.

"A few months in, minger starts accusing us of lifting things from her purse. Well _fuck,_ for all I knew one of the wee beasties _was_ lifting her bawbees. We _all_ fucking stole, just usually not from the hand that feeds us, yeah? So I didn't think anything of it. I was fucking eleven. Just a muppet."

"Then she fucking starts holding court with herself. Having conversations with the fucking _air._ She says we're demons sent up from hell to test her. Says we're watching her, watching her, won't give her any rest."

"I should have fucking _left,_ but I thought a house meant 'safe' then. I thought a roof and four walls fucking _meant_ something then. And the other three were so wee, all under six…"

"One day she left for the grocery and never came back. Just…fucking locked us in and _left. _I fixed them cheese sandwiches, and we waited. There wasn't much in the cupboards. If I'd known she wasn't fucking coming back, I wouldn't have used so much bread and filling…"

"We waited five days, or thereabouts. I cannae recall precisely, just that the food lasted for only a short while and then the wee bastards started fussing and wouldn't stop. We had water from the tap, and you can fill a belly up with that, but they wouldn't fucking hush. Fucking awful racket, but nobody came."

"Foster mum had a dog. An ugly half-breed that was sweet with children. I gave its food to the wee 'uns, and after a day or so it went fucking feral. Locked it up in the back bedroom so it wouldn't bite, and afterwards the radge bastard started howling and throwing himself against the door…ah, _fuck_…"

Nosty's shoulders begin to shake, and it's _this_ memory, the wretched animal that was shut away so that it's starving and suffering wouldn't be a danger to anyone but itself—_this_ is the recollection that breaks him.

He weeps silently, clutching her hand to his open mouth, crushing Belle's delicate fingers within a vise grip.

But this story demands an epilogue.

"There was a low window," Nosty explains through grit teeth, "It was a garden flat, below ground, so finally I climbed a chair and smashed the glass with a fucking bottle she left lying around. Climbed out. Tore my chest all to shite. It took awhile before I found someone who would fucking listen.

"The others were probably adopted," he finishes quietly. "They were young enough for it. Folks still want 'em when they're under six. They believe there's still hope for 'em. I don't know what happened to the fucking dog."

Belle feels Nosty's teeth pressed to the back of her hand and feels his spare shoulders begin to quake and shudder once more, and she knows herself to be utterly inadequate to this sort of suffering. She has grieved and buried her loved ones, but love has always been tangible in her very fortunate life; it has always been present alongside her grief.

At a loss, she crawls over his weeping form and curls securely around him, so that her warm body is the solid wall his knobbly back presses against, and her warm arms are able to wrap tightly around his damaged chest.

What Belle wants to say is this: _I'm terrified—so terrified—love will never be enough to heal a wound that cuts so deep. I'm terrified that if I fall asleep, I'll wake and find you gone. _

Instead, she whispers: "You saved their lives, Nosty."

Instead, Belle waits until the worst of his wretched, convulsive grief has passed, and murmurs: _"I carry your heart with me…I carry it in my heart…I am never without it…"_

She kisses the fragile, warm shell of his ear and whispers the rest of it, her tender declaration, her loving, devout pledge: _"…here is the deepest secret nobody knows…(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud…and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows…higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)…and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart…i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)."_

He quiets, listening to her sweet, lilting voice, recognizing the timeless troth in verse: _"I carry your heart…I carry it in my heart…"_

"It's Arran," Nosty says faintly, just when Belle believes she's lost him to sleep. "My name is fucking Arran. The only thing my mum ever gave me."

"Is it Irish?" she murmurs, ready for the indignant jolt that quickly follows.

"Fucking _Irish_…?" Nosty replies, twisting round to look at her.

"Only kidding," Belle whispers, brushing her lips over his and settling in for what she hopes will be a sweet and restful sleep. "Only kidding, love."


	12. Chapter 11

Nosty keeps odd hours, even when he's not spelunking in the dark caverns of his defective psyche, but Belle doesn't seem to mind it. Not anymore than she minds having an unwashed Gles-gi bastard curled up against her fucking headboard for days on end, which is to say, not at all.

During the afternoons, off and on, he sleeps. It's safer and warmer to catnap during the day when you're sleeping rough, and by now the habit is deeply rooted. Belle keeps close, reading books or grading papers, sometimes rubbing slow circles over a spot at the base of his back that seems to release his grief—and then he's fucking making a spectacle of himself all over again, and she's crooning and hauling him closer, and he's all but crawling out of his own skin, trying to shed it and get inside hers.

He's a fucking _mess._

She lets him keep his own hours and wallow in his own filth, but there's one thing Belle won't budge on, and that's food. Regular, wholesome meals.

"Warm apple pie," she tells him when he wakes late on Sunday evening, "fresh from the oven. And homemade whipped cream. Open your mouth, sweetheart…" and she spoon-feeds him the dessert like he's a fucking infant. Makes him want to fucking bawl.

_Everything_ makes him want to fucking bawl.

His appetite's gone, of course—food tastes like fucking cardboard when he's on a downswing—but Belle looks so chuffed when he manages more than a few mouthfuls of noodle soup or sweetened rice porridge or her fucking _homemade apple pie_ _with whipped cream_ that he tries to do right by her cooking. It's been lifetimes since someone made him a meal or fussed at him with a napkin, and he wishes he were in his right mind to savor it properly.

"Is it good, Nosty?" she asks, brushing her thumb over his bottom lip to capture some of the flaky, buttery pie crust and afterwards popping the finger into her own mouth. She tried out 'Arran' on him once or twice, but he told her to leave off.

He lies and says her pie is hoora good, pretends he can fucking taste it, pretends he's not so damaged as all that, and Belle looks at him closely, then offers a spoonful of the fresh whipped cream. He manages three more bites before turning away from her warm, fond gaze and the silver spoon held hopefully aloft.

"Pain cuts deep," she murmurs, gently brushing at his stubbled chin with the paper napkin, "but it's not the deepest thing, sweetheart. It passes away, in the end."

"Are you writing my fucking eulogy?" he mutters, and she smothers a small smile, happy to see him rally a bit, chewing on her full lower lip, then taking a bite of the pie for herself.

Of course, his beautiful bird cannot stay by his side day in and day out.

When she leaves him on Saturday to buy groceries and have his key made up, she tucks her sweet-smelling cashmere scarf beneath his rough chin—the very same one from King's College Hospital. Nosty wakes with the smell of Belle's shampoo in his nostrils and the memory of the night she carefully washed him swirling around within his skull. He's still a fucking mess, but—_it helps. _It really fucking does.

Returning from her brief errands, Belle finds the scarf wrapped snug around his neck and tucked up over his eyes. From then on, it remains within Nosty's nest of blankets, the red tartan pattern stark against the white sheets and cotton duvet. He crumples and twists it within his fists while he's awake and presses it to his mouth and nose while he's asleep, and, by tender, tacit agreement—_it belongs to him now._

The _nights_ though—nights are the fucking worst of it.

Belle stays up late, reading aloud while he stares, unblinking, into the darkness: poetry, drama, tales of adventure. Yet, when the moon begins its descent, and her eyelids are too heavy to carry on, she inevitably sets her book aside, switches off the dim bedside lamp, and joins him beneath the blankets.

Even with her soft scarf pressed against the hollow of his cheek, even with her warm body curled around his, even with her wee hand sweetly pressed to his ruined chest, even _then_—Nosty dreads the impending stretch of hours when he will lie awake, alone with his obsessive, spiraling thoughts: _Fucking hopeless. Fucking friendless. Fucking worthless. Fuckinghopelessfuckingfriendlessfuckingworthless. _

Makes him want to blink out of fucking existence.

Late on Wednesday afternoon, Nosty's fitful catnap is interrupted by the front door being pulled gently shut. Belle has been away teaching an introductory film studies course, and he's relieved to hear the regular, reassuring sounds of rustling fabric and shuffling papers and jingling keys and her posh high heels clicking over the parquet floor.

Presently, she is standing in the bedroom doorway, sliding off her shoes before crossing the floor to crouch beside her large, disheveled bed. _His _bed, Belle has promised, more than once, and the thought of _that_ (and the little brass key on the bedside table) leaves his mouth dry and his thoughts muddied. _His_ bed—with conditions?

Or _his_ bed—unconditionally?

After watching the rise and fall of the blankets intently and at some length, Belle whispers, "Are you awake, sweetheart?" and when Nosty stirs within his stale nest, she sheds her yellow lambswool cardigan and sheer silk stockings, undoes the little tortoise shell twist holding up her hair, and crawls in close beside him.

She tucks her knees up so that his meager, bony arse is cradled in her soft lap and twines her arms around his lean frame, giving him a gentle squeeze in lieu of a spoken greeting.

"You were reading the Cummings today." Belle speaks into his thick hair, warming the back of his head with her honeyed breath. She has been drinking from her tumbler of sweetened, milky tea. He fiercely envies the students who get to watch her sip and lecture, week after week, scribbling down her words and staring at her gorgeous, matchless legs. Likely, most of them are in love with her. You'd have to be fucking mad _not_ to fall in love with Belle.

And, yeah, it's true. He was reading the Cummings this morning. Nosty spent a little time sorting through the large stack of books Belle has piled upon her nightstand, hunting for the text of the poem he's come to think of as _his_ poem—_his_ heart, carried within her unblemished heart. He found it within a slim volume titled _100 Selected Poems,_ and he tucked it away in his fail-safe memory, along with several other by the same author.

He left the book open upon the duvet while dozing.

And, yeah, the unspoken portion of her question is also true: he's been reading, which means he's feeling a little less muddled today. A little less _vanquished. _Which also means that he's become clear enough to realize that it's time for him to return to his boys and his bridge and his…responsibilities, such as they fucking are.

"It's meant to be spoken," he hears himself saying, because he cannot yet find a way to tell Belle the other thing, "It just lies there flat on the fucking page, looking odd, but when you say it aloud…"

She nods, exhaling contentedly against the back of his neck. His beautiful, peculiar bird loves to hear him talk. She belongs in Bedlam, but he's fucking glad she's here instead.

Belle leaves off stroking his sternum and moves her hand upwards to gently twist and tangle in his locks. Does she have any idea what this fucking _does_ to him, Nosty wonders weakly. The tender twining and the tugging at the roots of his long hair? In his right mind, a similar touch from Belle would have him all but rutting against her leg like some deranged bitch in heat.

_This_ is his most private, furtive fantasy—the one he only allows himself after he's seen the bottom of a bottle of gin—to have his manky hair softly stroked and his rigid cock gently caressed while a loving _someone _calls him _her darling, her treasure, her beloved boy._ While a doting lover whispers _my_ _sweetheart,_ and _my_ _love,_ and _my precious one,_ and a hundred other mortifying, impossible endearments, all while tenderly petting his hair and slowly pumping his cock.

It's fucking humiliating, but there it is. He's at half-mast now, just thinking about it.

"I want to ask you something, Nosty, but—I'm certain it will come out horribly. Will you forgive me in advance?"

Belle has begun to use her buffed, polished fingernails on his scalp, tenderly scratching the crown of his head, then traveling downwards along his hot neck, sending an exquisite tremor all along his spine that resonates deep within his heavy, aching balls. Her nails are busy, busy, busy, moving lightly over the top of each of his bony shoulders, then roving upwards to scratch leisurely circles behind his sensitive ears.

"Aye," he replies hoarsely, "I'd forgive you anything."

"Your education. How did you—how did you come by it? From what you've told me, I assume you never went on past primary?"

Oh, _that._

Belle's considerate hand moves to his right shoulder blade, scratching along the sharp, gaunt ridge, making him fucking shiver and break out in gooseflesh. Oh _yes,_ he'll tell her this dreary story—_any_ story, in actual fact—if she'll just keep on with the scratching for a little while longer.

"Public libraries, bird. When I was just a wee muppet, sleeping rough and learning the ropes, I kept up a rotation between Holburn, Barbican, and Lambath Palace. Nobody bothers you as long as you're reading a book and not being a fucking bother yourself. So I just found a discrete corner and—and the books were a nice little holiday, yeah? Later on, I used the Uni libraries—half the students are fucking napping anyhow, so it's easy to blend in."

Her warm hand has stilled against his back. "Were you ever at King's College Library? When was this, sweetheart?"

"Aye, I spent some time there. Five years ago or thereabouts."

Belle laughs, his favorite sound in this entire, fucked up, piece o' shite world. "That's where I holed up to write my dissertation, Nosty. We probably overlapped." She laughs again, utterly delighted, and the delicious scrape of her nails over his back resumes.

"I have another question for you." Now Belle sounds playful, almost.

"Eh?" he answers, guardedly.

"I'll be shepherding my Shakespeare class to the Globe tonight to see a dress rehearsal of Othello, and afterwards I'll be taking them out to the pub for a discussion. It's a small class, only ten students, and most of them are quite pleasant and astute. If you're feeling up to it, Nosty…"

_"Belle…"_ Her hand has now reached the very base of his back, but it seems all of his grief has already been wrung from him. _"Belle, I can't…"_

"Why can't you?" she murmurs, ducking her head to kiss and nibble behind his ear.

"I have to…get back…_fuck,_ Belle…I'm sorry…"

"Don't apologize; it's alright, love," she reassures him, her fingertips traveling downwards to caress the curve of his arse, making him twitch and jerk and hiss through clenched teeth. "I thought I'd ask, but it's truly alright…"

Her tongue darts out, tracing the crease where his ear meets his skull, and her hand reaches for a pillow he's kicked downwards toward the foot of the bed. Belle draws the pillow up between his bent knees, edging them gently apart. "I understand. It's alright, sweetheart…" She kisses along his neck, wetting his quickening pulse point with quick, hot flashes of her tongue, sometimes sucking, sometimes nibbling.

Her left arm slips from beneath his armpit, and then Belle buries her left hand in his hair, gently tugging, gently kneading, and then…her right hand—_oh, fuck_—and then Belle's right hand has returned to his quivering arse, creeping deliberately downwards until she's got the very root of his rigid cock between her soft fingertips, massaging him slowly, her wrist brushing against his heavy sack and forcing him to groan aloud.

"That's alright, sweetheart. Only when you're ready. Only then, sweet baby…"

Oh, and he fucking moans aloud at _that,_ the most tender of all endearments. Will she give him this most precious, most private fantasy? And how to summon the courage to ask for it when he's already out of his fucking mind with her fingers tangled in his locks and her warm hand rubbing him in that glorious, sensitive, in-between place where his cock disappears into his aching, clenching pelvis?

So again he whispers: _"I can't…please, I can't…,"_ just hoping…hoping.

And Belle must understand a little, because she doesn't fucking hesitate. No, she murmurs: _"Sweet baby, my sweet baby…"_ and then she takes the fleshy, wee lobe of his ear between her teeth and _sucks. _Meanwhile, her fingertips are working the root of him, cupping and caressing him as he pants and shakes and grinds downward.

_"Ah…ah fu—…no—" _

Words fail him when his beautiful bird extracts her clever hand from between his legs and quickly tugs the cashmere scarf down from beneath his chin. He moans and pleads while Belle ever so gently wraps his cock with the exquisitely soft material and begins to slowly, delicately guide the cashmere along the length of him, easily finding his rhythm. She tightens her grip at the thick, throbbing base of him and loosens it so that she just ghosts over his sensitive, leaking head.

Belle suckles his ear, only pausing to praise her _sweet baby, her beautiful boy, her sweet love_ lavishly when he finally loses control and begins to cry out loudly and rhythmically, matching the tempo of her steady, loving strokes. His mouth hangs open, and his face is contorted.

"Like this, love?" Belle asks, quickening her pace at the slightest upward movement of his hips, "Do you need it harder, baby?" she whispers, kissing his shoulder and tenderly tugging his hair.

_"No,_ no—softer,_ just like that,"_ he grinds out, "Just like that…_ah…"_

And so she softly caresses and strokes and cradles the length of him with the cashmere, calling him _sweetheart_ and _so good_ and _sweet baby_ until he's clawing at the bedclothes with curled fingers and throwing his head back against her shoulder and offering Belle his throat to bite and suck while he pleads loudly, senselessly for his release.

When he's too fucking close to think clearly, he babbles: "Please say it, Belle! _Ah—please fucking say it!"_

And miraculously, she understands him, tenderly crooning: _"Sweet Arran…sweet baby…sweet Arran…"_

And it's too much; it's too good. His climax abruptly takes him, and Nosty jerks and struggles and pulses within the close embrace of the scarf and his beautiful, beautiful Belle. While he continues to quiver and shake, she kisses his neck, his bony shoulders, his wet earlobe, everywhere her teeth traveled earlier to give him pleasure.

"I still have to leave," he whispers at long last, breathing raggedly, twisting around to bury his face in the warm crook of her neck.

"It's alright, love. Rest a bit. Rest now, sweetheart." And Belle gently strokes his hair while she carefully wipes him clean.


	13. Chapter 12

Will his boys be able to fucking smell it on him, this new and execrable weakness?

Will they know at a glance that these past few days have transformed him into someone's _sweetheart,_ someone's _precious love,_ Belle's _baby_ and her _beautiful boy? _

It's inconceivable that these sweet, searing words will leave him unmarked. She whispered them into the shell of his ear, and he felt layers upon layers of his _filth_ and his _skin_ and his fucking _contamination_ peeling away, leaving him raw and shivering and exposed. Belle has scraped him clean and remade him newborn.

His boys will surely see it. They're sure as fuck going to _smell_ it on him, and then—well, then he'll be fucking done for, won't he?

His mates are a pack of wolves, and it was _him_ that taught 'em how to howl and claw. It was Nosty that taught 'em how to scrape open another bloke's wound and how to scramble for the biggest piece of the fucking pie and how to step on the backs of the meek and the spineless.

It was _him_ that taught 'em to look for the downcast eyes, the hunched shoulders, the palsied hands, and the shameless, desperate hunger that transforms men into _things. _It was _him_ that taught 'em to sniff out weakness and how to fucking _piss on its shoes,_ and now—well, now it's going to take all the self-mastery he has to put 'em off the scent.

He's never been away this long before.

Nosty didn't fucking bite and slash his way to the top of the Bankside dogpile just to throw it all away for a clean blanket and a plush mattress and a warm hand wrapped around his joystick.

But—_but…_that warm hand is attached to the loving arm that held him close while he cringed and wept, and that loving arm is attached to the sloping shoulder that he gripped and burrowed his wet face against, and that sloping shoulder is just above the unblemished heart that carries _his_ heart, and—_oh God, oh fuck, if Belle told him to stay, he would stay. If she took him in her arms and told him he must choose—her or the only life he's ever known—he would choose her._

Nosty rests his unshaven cheek on the mattress, staring at Belle's reflection in the bathroom mirror. She is painting her mouth a deep burgundy with a dainty, wee wand. Already, she has put on her theatre clothes: a black dress with a low, scooped neck and sheer, black stockings. Her brown hair falls in loose, gleaming ringlets over her pale shoulders.

_His bird's so fucking beautiful._

As if aware of the content of his thoughts, Belle meets his eyes in the mirror and presses her lips together, blotting the dark lipstick. Then she _beams_ at him, and he feels it deep within his rib cage, the liquid warmth spreading swiftly outwards to his face and his churning belly. His head may be resting against the mattress, but even so—Belle's warm smile leaves him dizzy and wanting.

Hanging over the hot, humming radiator in the bathroom is her—_his—_cashmere scarf. It seems that she took a damp rag to it while he was dozing. The memory of that scarf moving between his legs has his skin buzzing and his face burning.

Belle crosses the dark room and sits beside him on the rumpled bed, her hip pressed to his drawn up knees. She reaches out to smooth the long locks back from his face and bends forward to nuzzle his temple with the tip of her nose.

"I left a ticket on top of your clothes, just in case you change your mind about the play," she murmurs, kissing his ear. "There are fresh towels in the bathroom, if you need them. I should be home around midnight, depending on how they block the scenes and how late the class discussion runs."

She slides a soft hand underneath the blankets, grazing his arse and thigh. "I love you, Nosty," Belle says quietly, her eyes alight. "I love you with all my heart. And I want you to know that if you don't come back…I'll come and find you."

He shudders at the thought of it: Belle wandering some dodgy neighborhood after dark, searching for him. _Did_ his bird ever hear him talking about Waterloo or Blackfriars? Maybe with those fucking jakeys at Victoria Station? And—and…_she loves him?_ _Fucking shite._ He doesn't know what to _do_ with this shite.

"Promise you won't ever come hunting, Belle," he demands, raising his dizzy head off the mattress, "It's not safe." She quickly slips her fingers beneath his dreads and dips her dark lips to his neck, gently kissing his swallow tat.

"I can't promise that, Arran," Belle whispers, grazing her teeth along his throat and afterwards kissing his clenched jaw and bidding him a soft _"Goodnight."_

She doesn't order him to stay.

Nosty listens to her footsteps receding—soft at first, then louder once she's put on her heels—and exhales at the sound of Belle's front door being pulled shut and the deadbolt sliding into place.

_Shite._

With an uneasy sigh, Nosty sits up and swings his skinny legs over the edge of the bed. After a week of him sleeping and eating and carrying on in these sheets, Belle's going to need to fucking burn them. His wrist is healing nicely, though, and the most recent scar on his chest had faded to a pale, puckered pink.

Bare arsed, Nosty walks over to the upholstered chair where Belle has stacked his neatly folded clothes. His black leather jacket is draped over the back of it, and a ticket from the dry cleaner is attached to the coat's ripped lining.

On the seat of the chair is a pile of new t-shirts: black and gray and white. And underneath the shirts—_oh_ _fuck._ Belle has bought him two new kilts, both a fine, red tartan. Both made of the softest wool. They look like the sort of thing you would get from a posh tourist trap back in Glesgie for five hundred quid a fucking pop.

Tucked underneath the swank, red kilts are several pairs of thick, woolen socks.

The back of his throat is fucking burning, and his eyes sting like someone chucked sand in his face. Belle's housed him, fed him, fucked him, says she loves him—and now she's buying him fucking presents.

Overcome, Nosty nearly overlooks a small, white box tucked in amongst the socks.

Scrawled on the lid in Belle's precise, elegant cursive is a line he recognizes from _100 Selected Poems_:

_"my blood approves,  
and kisses are better fate  
than wisdom"_

A tremor runs through him when he picks up the wee box in his hands and feels the unexpected heft of it. Resting within is the silver, chain-link bracelet—the same one Belle offered him back at King's College Hospital.

Nosty's hands are shaking as he lifts and fastens it around his uninjured wrist: _a talisman, a charm, her tender claim upon him._

He walks on unsteady legs to the bathroom and turns on the water in the shower. Steam fills the room while he sits on the edge of the tub, lost in thought.

First he'll get himself cleaned up, then he'll go check on his boys down at Waterloo, and afterwards—afterwards he hopes the Globe Theatre will let him in the fucking door.

If not, he'll come back here and wait for Belle.


	14. Chapter 13

The house lights dim, and Belle feels a familiar flutter of excitement beneath her breastbone: _the_ _play is beginning._

Her students perch beside her on the curved, wooden bench, fidgeting with their programs and huddling together beneath thick, wool blankets for heat. Most were wise and heeded her advice to dress warmly. The young ladies who chose fashion over bulky-coated practicality have all found arms to burrow beneath.

Belle's most promising pupil, a young Dubliner studying at King's College on scholarship, has requested permission to go and join the throng of theatregoers standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the yard, just below the stage. She can make out his eager, lanky silhouette in the evening gloom, illuminated by dozens of candles flickering within glass hurricane lanterns. Above, the November sky is cloudy and dark.

Iago and Roderigo, dressed in striking black leather, stride out onto the floorboards, and a hush falls over the audience.

The meticulously restored Globe Theatre is open to the elements, and while the two gentlemen loudly proclaim their mutual dislike of Othello into the chill night air, their breath swirls around their pale, stormy faces.

The actors aren't playing this opening scene for laughs as so many have done before them. Rather, their cruel scheming seems to send a deeper chill throughout the silent, huddled audience. When Iago tosses out his famous line about doomed Desdemona and her loathsome Moor "making the beast with two backs," nary a face cracks a smile.

The crowd—Shakespeare aficionados willing to brave an open-air dress rehearsal before the company goes on tour—is well aware that the lovers' pleasure will be short-lived.

Belle glances to her left.

Her purse rests upon the empty bench, saving a seat for Nosty.

She drinks in the candles illuminating the gallery and stage, the stark, brutal scenery, the actors' polished voices, and the endearingly intent faces of her students, thinking: "I wish he were here to see it."

She feels the phantom weight of Nosty's arm around her shoulder and summons up a memory of the heat that radiates from his slight, wiry frame. The hardness went out of his honey-brown eyes during the past week, but the hunger hasn't, and the wariness still remains. In bed, in his sleep, he groans and grips her hard enough to bruise.

Sighing, feeling oddly homesick and chilled to the bone, Belle settles in to watch the show.

_His considerate bird left him a fare card for the Tube on the dining room table, and Nosty finds himself strangely relieved it wasn't cash. _

_It's fucking radge, seeing as she's done naught but waste her wages clothing and feeding him since day one, but—a fare card feels better somehow than a tenner laid out for him on the tabletop. Makes him feel a little less like a piece of street meat._

_Not that he plans on riding the fucking train._

_Nosty needs to walk tonight. Walking helps to clear the cobwebs from his skull and gives him time to school his face and work a little spring back into his step._

_The memory of Belle's gentle voice is still buzzing in his ears, making them burn despite the cold. _

_"I love you, Nosty," she'd whispered, calm as you please, the words rolling off her sweet tongue like it was nothing—like it came natural to her to love no-count fuck-ups. Like she didn't realize he'd never heard anything like it before in his entire bankrupt-as-fuck life._

_Nosty anxiously fingers the blade he stole from Belle's kitchen drawer and finds himself thinking, "Loves me—but for how fucking long?"_

_How long until his bird finds herself some other, better lost cause? And—most importantly—how will he keep his spine straight and saunter off into the fucking sunset when that day inevitably arrives?_

_Even these swirling, fretful thoughts of Belle soften his face somewhat, so Nosty locks his beautiful bird away in a far corner of his mind and focuses his energy on the tedious job ahead: retaining his status as Head Fucker in Charge._

_Nature abhors a vacuum, and nowhere is this postulate more true than amidst the fucking dregs of London society. Power and fear rule these streets, which is to say, Nosty rules these streets—with brains, bravado, and a fair amount of brawling—but stepping out for a little mental health vacation means that someone else has likely stepped in. Robbo or fucking Marley, probably. Which means a lad will be taking a beating tonight, and it sure as fuck won't be him._

_Nosty didn't get his wee swallow tat for fucking ornithological reasons._

_He doesn't bother skulking and scoping the scene once he gets to Waterloo; there's always a lookout. He's made sure of it. Instead, Nosty saunters up to a campfire and lifts a lit fag off of a meek looking bloke in a dirty, torn jumper. _

_"Well, at least you choobs didn't burn the fucking place down without me," he says, exhaling smoke and looking around, bouncing on the soles of his feet. Nosty's eyes glitter as he takes in the sorry lot of 'em._

_"Oi, Nosty!" voices slur in greeting. "Shite, it's Nosty! Get 'im a drink, will ya?" Amidst the shouted hullos and drunken laughter, a bloke pulls up a wooden crate so Nosty can sit and watch the flames. Someone passes him a half empty bottle._

_"Have yourself a nice little holiday, then?" _

_Marley is standing over him, looking strung out and nettled. Looking like he wants to fucking tango._

_"Yeah, nice," Nosty agrees, flicking his fag end into the dirt and taking out his blade real casual, studying it in the firelight. He makes a little show of ignoring the other man, who's standing close enough to be a fucking nuisance. Wanker fucking smells._

_Marley's eyes narrow, and nearby voices fall silent. "You ain't been mindin' the shop, Nosty. Jimmy and Sean say they saw you in the Underground a week ago with some bird. Said the two of you looked real cozy."_

_Marley bends low, but speaks loud enough for the gathering audience: "I hear you've changed the fucking scene, Nosty. Found yourself a posh little backer. Just like you found yourself a fucking backer in the pen."_

_Nosty laughs a breathy, frosty laugh at this jab, holding very still. His stolen knife gleams in his palm, and he's aware of his field of vision narrowing, of the adrenaline that floods his veins like ice water. _

_He licks his lips._

_Fucker talking about his stint in Feltham. Everyone fucking knows not to talk to Nosty about Feltham. Fucker wants to tango. _

_Baring his sharp teeth, Nosty abruptly launches himself off of the milk crate, grabbing for Marley's thick neck. He knocks the smelly bastard down in the dirt with a yell, but fucker's a full head taller, and Marley manages to get a knee into his gut and a fist into his face before Nosty can bring the blade up to his chin._

_They thrash about on the ground, grunting, cussing, and breathing hard. Nosty manages to stay on top, but Marley's hand is tight around his throat, pinching his windpipe. _

_"I hear…this is what you fucking like…Nosty son," Marley grits out, "You tell your posh hen…about being a fuck toy in the pen?" Marley swings wildly with his free hand, splitting Nosty's lip and connecting with his nose._

_With a wild snarl, Nosty cracks the fucker's head twice on the hard, uneven ground, and Marley bites his own tongue so deeply that there's blood all down his chin and cheeks—but he hasn't given up the ghost yet. _

_"You smell like…fucking fruity soap," Marley chokes out, "how long did you have to…lap her posh little cunt…to get that fucking bracelet? What makes you so fucking special, eh?"_

_No one—fucking no one—speaks of Belle that way. _

_Nosty snarls and yanks the blade up against Marley's jugular, wheezing, feeling like he's going to boak. His long hair falls forward, casting shadows, and he can't see the other bloke's spattered face clearly, just hears the angry gasping and feels the rapid rise and fall of his chest. _

_The handle of the knife—Belle's knife—has a wee etching that arrests his attention. Dainty scroll work on polished wood. His heavy bracelet rests against the elegant, etched handle, gleaming in the firelight. _

_Nosty doesn't want to turn Belle's pretty paring knife into a fucking murder weapon. He doesn't want this baheid's gore on her dead brother's bracelet. He sure as fuck doesn't want visits from her every other Tuesday through a scratched plexiglass window, waiting for the day she doesn't come at all. _

_He doesn't want to be under a fucking bridge, struggling in the dirt like a fucking animal. He wants his warm nest-bed. He wants his bird._

_With a hiss, Nosty lifts the blade to Marley's sweating temple and makes him fucking howl, dragging it down across his cheek, all the way to his bleeding lips. Carves him up real good._

_"Anyone else want to ask about my fucking holiday?" he growls at the gathered crowd, then cracks Marley's head one last time against the dirt, knocking him unconscious. _

_"Fucking radge waster," Nosty mutters, then stands on his unsteady legs, glares at his drunken audience, turns on the heel of his boot, and stalks the fuck off._

_He's filthy and bleeding and cold, and he wants his Belle._

Othello thunders, "Down strumpet!" and stalks around the edge of the disheveled bed.

Desdemona cowers in the middle, clutching the sheets, her eyes wide and glassy. "Kill me tomorrow!," she pleads, "Let me live tonight!"

Many in the audience have already begun to weep, such is the strength of this performance.

During the fourth act, the gentleman playing Othello struck Desdemona across the cheek, the blow connecting harder than what was likely intended. Hearing that loud crack, the audience gasped, and the actress cried out.

She uses that fear now, her wet eyes darting around the stage to the exits, to the windows, to the foot of the bed, but there is nowhere to go.

Othello moves closer, weeping and sneering by turns.

"It is too late," he gasps, and then follows the famous death scene, Desdemona's face entrapped beneath the pillow—but, oh, how she fights him! Clawing at his cheeks, kicking at his stomach. They won't be able to keep this up while they tour. After one or two such performances, they'll be scratched and bruised beyond recognition.

While Desdemona's attendant screams out for help, Belle imagines she hears an echoing voice calling out her name, but then the sound is gone, carried away on the wind, and she feels tears pricking the backs of her eyes. Othello is abusing his lady, even in death.

_"Sir, if you'll just wait right here…"_

_The fuckers won't let him into their posh theatre. He's tracked dirt on their fine carpet and his lip is split open and swollen, and he's not wanted in a lobby where everything is plush and swank and spotless. _

_A security guard has his fingertips on Nosty's heaving chest, which Nosty angrily knocks aside. _

_He stumbles back, yelling for Belle._

_He isn't thinking particularly clearly._

_But then he notices the prissy little gent behind the desk who's picking up a phone. Must be the coppers he's calling. _

_Nosty leaves off his hollering and stumbles back out the revolving glass door—back into the baltic night air. _

_He needs his bird. He feels like he's being torn in fucking two, and it's only her arms that can hold him together._

It's a little after midnight when Belle unlocks her front door and steps inside. The room is quiet and dark, and her heart sinks—but then she catches sight of Nosty's black boots, scuffed and dirty, chucked onto the wood floor.

He's hunched on the couch, staring at one of her family photographs, seemingly lost in thought. His leather jacket is slumped on the floor.

_"Nosty,"_ she says, breaking his trance, and he rises with a great, shuddering breath, laying the picture aside.

He crosses the room slowly, taking jerky, faltering steps, and won't meet her eyes when he stands before her.

_"Sweetheart," _she whispers, her voice breaking on the word, and then he steps closer, wanting to be held and touched, and the moonlight illuminates his spoiled, bloodied face.

Belle draws in a sharp breath.

_"Oh no!" _she gasps._ "Oh sweetheart, what happened?"_ Her fingertips carefully investigate his split lip and bruised cheeks, brushing away flecks of dried blood. _"How badly are you hurt?" _She feels beneath his t-shirt, strokes his shaking arms, sweeps her eyes over him, looking for more blood.

Nosty presses close, hiding his face against the top of her shoulder, wanting Belle to stroke his hair. _He's still her sweetheart. She doesn't ask "What have you done?" but rather, "What's been done to you?" She wants to know how badly her baby is hurt. He's filthy and trembling and damaged, and he's still her sweetheart._

With an agonized little moan, he pushes Belle back against the dining room table and drops to his knees.

Nosty's gut still hurts from where that bastard struck him in the stomach, and his knees are scratched all to hell from the scuffle in the dirt, but he barely feels it. Instead, he feels _Belle—_still wearing her tweed jacket and her shiny, posh pumps—warm and soft and perfect and _his._

She's trying to drag him back up to his feet by the elbows. She's telling him she's so happy he came back.

He stays on his knees, fervently kissing her belly through the black theatre dress, lifting the skirt and tugging down her delicate, cream knickers.

Belle's silk stockings stop at her upper thighs, exposing pale, plump flesh, and he's panting, reaching out to grip the table, ready to come from just the feel of his kilt brushing over his swollen cock.

"Nosty," Belle says, covering his hands with her own, trying to pull him to stand, "Sweetheart, I need to take care of your face."

He shakes his head, breathing hard, and lifts his hands from the table to grip Belle's hips. His lips travel lower, pressing kisses through the fabric to her navel, her abdomen, and then to the soft mound he wants to suck and lick and fucking _worship._

Nosty has never used his mouth on a woman before.

He's pressing wet kisses through the soft cotton, and Marley's taunts are knocking around in his brain. How many minted, experienced fuckers have had their tongues in Belle's sweet muff? How many leisurely evenings has she spent in the leather backseats of swank cars with blokes who had all the time in the world?

_How the fuck does he do this? _

_How does he erase the fucking Uni boys and the trust fund fucks and make Belle think only ever of him?_

It's true that Nosty's never lacked for courage. He ignores the gentle hands that are plucking at his shoulders, ducks his head beneath her pretty dress, and rests his forehead against her dark curls, breathing deeply.

_"Oh Belle…"_

Nosty lifts his chin, kissing her curls softly, reverently.

_She's so fucking perfect. It feels so fucking good to be down here between her parted thighs. She smells warm and rich and coppery._

Nosty savors the way his bird sighs when he cautiously darts out his tongue, touching it to the top of her slit, gently parting her outer lips.

Belle tastes like nothing he's ever experienced before.

The lads like to joke about this. They call it foul, but _Belle tastes extraordinary._ A metallic sweetness mixed with something richer, deeper, and utterly unique. Nosty feels a bit drunk from just this one little taste, and moans while licking his way deeper, dragging his hot tongue over her delicate, inner folds, causing Belle to jerk beneath his hands and catch her breath.

She still wants to drag him up to stand, so he must be doing something wrong. Belle isn't out of her mind, just breathing heavy and gripping his shoulders.

_It must be because he's a fucking novice._

_He fucks fast and furious in alleys, not slow and exploratory in swank cars and posh flats._

_Fuck. Belle already knows a dozen different ways to make him fucking come, and he can't even give her proper head._

Nosty breathes her in deeply, licking rougher and quicker, gripping and kneading the backs of her thighs like Belle did for him. He tries to get his tongue all the way up inside her, and she groans a little at that, but—she isn't rocking forward the way he needed to when she had him backed up against this table.

She isn't even gripping his head, just grasping his shoulder and the edge of the table, and her eyes are wide open and so fucking warm, looking down at him.

_"Nosty—baby…"_

He redoubles his efforts, kissing and licking her soft inner thighs, wetting her properly with his mouth, lapping, lapping, frantically lapping, his tongue going a bit numb with it.

"Doesn't it…hurt your lips? _Oh!—I need to lie down,"_ Belle says, her voice raw. _"Please, I need to lie down, sweetheart…"_

He growls, not knowing if she's trying to save his pride and move him along to something else, but stands anyway, his cock bobbing out of his red kilt, rigid to the point of pain just from the smell and taste of her.

Belle tenderly kisses his wet, bloodied lips, and he allows himself to be led to the back bedroom.

Nosty stripped the soiled sheets from the bed before he left, and they are piled upon the floor near the doorway.

_"I didn't know where to put 'em,"_ he mumbles, and Belle smiles, thanks him sweetly, leads him over to the bare mattress.

He pauses at the foot of the bed because, _well fuck,_ he doesn't know how to do _this_ properly either, now does he? Doesn't know how to be with a woman when there's all the time in the world? When it's something other than a fast gobble in the alley or a lonely wank beneath his tarp?

_Shite. Belle will realize just who she yoked herself to right quick._

But his bird is tugging him forward, settling herself back on the mattress, kicking off her knickers, and smiling at him like he didn't just fucking fail to bring her off.

_"Come here, sweetheart,"_ she says, and the words go straight to his swollen cock.

_Aye, she can tell him where to go and for how long. _

_Maybe he can be her good boy, and then she'll tell him what to do and how to do it, and he can fucking obliterate the fuckers that came before him._

_Because…he fucking belongs to her now, yeah? He'll be her good boy, Belle's baby, her pet. Oh yes, if she'll just go on touching him like he's worth something. If she'll just keep holding him close while she brings him off._

"Come here," Belle repeats, opening her arms, and when Nosty crawls to her she reaches out and unfastens his kilt.

"Take everything off, sweetheart," she croons, he voice so gentle, and he rushes to comply, yanking up his shirt, tugging at his socks. Nosty feels a flair of pride when her eyes are drawn to his thick, arched cock, wet at the tip and beyond ready for her.

_"Oh baby,"_ she says, her voice low and wanting, and Nosty moans and drapes his naked body over her, kissing Belle's lovely, white neck. Her hands reach downwards immediately, grasping his tight arse, making him grunt. She kneads and massages his cheeks until his hips begin to rock forward and back, and he's torn his lips from her neck, seeking out her mouth.

Belle rolls him onto his back, and Nosty breathes through his open mouth, half mad with the need to be hers. Mad for her to show him how.

Belle lifts her black theatre dress up over her head, and only her stockings and lace bra remain now. She looks tousled and flushed and so fucking _glorious._

Nosty reaches for her, groaning, but she flips about, straddling his waist so that her plump little bottom is in his face, and he can see her lovely, wet folds.

Belle straightens out, kissing along his stomach until her breath is warming his twitching, eager cock, and her beautiful, fragrant, slick little cunt is right up in his face. Panting, Nosty lifts his head and begins to lick, desperate to give her pleasure, desperate to feel Belle's lips on his cock.

She gives him sweet, flickering kisses and hot licks along the length of him, teasing him, forcing him to lift his hips even though her slight weight has him pinned to the mattress.

_"Relax, sweetheart,"_ she murmurs against his stiff cock. _"Oh baby, like this,"_ and she licks him slowly, deliberately, her tongue traveling all the way down to his sack, and Nosty realizes she means to show him how.

He mimics her hot, steady strokes, using the flat of his tongue on the highest part of her and the wet tip once he reaches her slick entrance, repeating this over and over, just as she does, driving him slowly mad with her steady rhythm.

_"That's it, oh…!"_ she gasps, when the flat of his tongue presses hard against a wee nub at her opening, and Belle presses her own tongue to the head of his cock, first lapping, then offering him a gentle, insistent suckle that has him moaning between her legs,

_"Good, Nosty, oh, God, I need to…"_ she doesn't finish saying what she _needs to_ because her lips are easing over him, and he's struggling to thrust deeper just as she struggles for a faster rhythm against his mouth.

_"Please Belle,"_ he moans, _"please…ah! Please help me…"_

_"Yes, just, oh yes…"_ she whimpers, her hips rocking down hard against him, her tongue swirling around the head of his cock—so he swirls his own tongue around the wee nub she's got pressed against his mouth until her breath comes in little, gasping sobs: _"Oh please, oh please…"_

He pushes her legs further apart, groaning.

She begins to shake and keen then, spread wide, clutching him, and he feels the moment her body seizes up, the spasms that overtake her, the ways she calls out for him. _His bird. His beautiful Belle._

He's wild from it, the way she gasped his name, choking on it, her lips instantly returning to his cock to suckle and lick, and then his own body begins to shudder and jerk, and he's got his face buried in her wet curls, panting.

_"Felt so good…"_ he says, reaching down to take her hand.

"I want you to feel good," she murmurs, sounding sleepy. With a great effort, as if her limbs are made of something much heavier than bone and flesh, Belle turns around and climbs up his ruined chest. She kisses his collar bone and shuts her eyes.

"How does this end, Belle?" Nosty asks, his voice very quiet. He's got his hand buried in her soft hair.

"It doesn't," she promises.

The moonlight glints off of his silver bracelet, and Nosty stays awake long after his bird has drifted off into sleep.


	15. Chapter 15

"The Boxing Day party went pear-shaped without you, Belle."

Archie sips his tea and grimaces theatrically. "Everyone kept pestering, 'Where's Matthew?' 'Where's Belle?' And our Trivial Pursuit team suffered a serious setback in your absence."

"Oh no! Please tell me you carried the day, Archie!"

Belle smiles and stretches an arm out across the café table. She rests a hand on top of his rolled, chambray shirtsleeve. "Please tell me ourCantabrigian honor is still intact."

Archie allows suspense to build, taking another slow sip of his lukewarm Earl Grey. She arches her eyebrows and waits.

"Well—_thankfully, _Team Greenwich was utterly arseholed, and half of Team Westminster wandered off midway through the game to find a room to shag in. Somehow we limped along without our film and literature faction. But you won't be excused from next year's do, darling. My poor nerves couldn't take it."

He feigns sternness, his blue eyes dancing behind round, tortoise shell frames. Chalk dust decorates the front of his shirt.

"I promise not to miss it." Belle squeezes his arm affectionately. "Matthew rang on Christmas Eve, and we both agreed that with James gone, the entire month of December was bound to be fouled up. We both just sort of—_lost the plot_ of the entire holiday season. Matthew and Mary couldn't swing the airfare back to London so soon again anyhow, and the man I've been seeing wasn't too keen on meeting everybody en masse during a getaway holiday weekend."

She grins—a wry, private smile.

No, Nosty was _none too keen_ on that particular idea.

Archie covers her manicured hand with his own and brushes his large thumb over her knuckles. He looks as though he is cautiously chewing over something he very badly wants to say.

"The thing is—we've missed you at Wednesday pub nights, too, Belle. _I've_ missed you. Honestly, we've all been a bit worried…"

"Oh no. I recognize that face. You've fastened on your 'Concerned Psychiatrist' face, Archie. You should never wear it around friends."

Belle shakes his arm a little so that he can be sure she's only teasing.

"I _do_ realize that I've dropped off the map," she continues, "and I'm sorry for it, but—it isn't what you suspect. It isn't _depression,_ thank God. I miss James. I miss him terribly. I think about him every day, but…"

Belle bites her lower lip and leans halfway across the table.

"I've fallen in love, Archie. I feel as though I'm—I'm somehow back at Uni, eighteen years old again, living off air and barely any sleep and—and _endorphins."_

Belle laughs breathlessly, "Honestly? If it weren't for teaching courses, I'd probably never leave the flat. I'm in that deep. I didn't realize it could happen like this much beyond the age of sixteen, but here I am. We hardly slept last night, but I feel as though I could swim the length of the River Thames!"

She sits across from him, her cheeks flushed and her turkey pesto sandwich untouched. Archie fiddles with his already spotless eyeglasses and elects to choose his next words very carefully.

"And this is the man you met in hospital, Belle? The one who shared a room with your brother?" He gently extracts his forearm and leans back in his plastic chair, studying her closely. "This is the friend with the mood disorder that you mentioned a while back?"

Belle's dancing eyes dim for a moment, and her pink cheeks pale.

It _hurts_ to hear Nosty reduced to simple, clinical terms. It makes him seem somehow less than he is. Nosty is extraordinary.

Nosty is _everything._

"Yes, him." She chews on her lower lip thoughtfully. There are so many questions she longs to ask now that the subject has come up, but if hewere sitting here beside her, she would keep mum.

Does that make what she's about to say a betrayal?

"What does it—what does it feel like to take lithium? What I mean is—is there any danger?"

Archie frowns and continues polishing his clean spectacles.

"No—no, there's no danger so long as you're under the care of a decent doctor. Lithium has been used to treat bipolar disorder for decades now. It's certainly less dangerous than being _off _medication and suffering an episode." He considers carefully. "The worst side effects are poor concentration and impaired memory. Sometimes, there is weight gain. Rarely, hand tremors."

He shifts in his chair. "Does he need a referral, Belle? Any side effects can be minimized by tweaking the dosage. If he's been acting disoriented, irritable…"

"No—but thank you." She takes a shallow breath and softly adds: "He doesn't—he doesn't medicate."

She watches her friend try to school his dear, blunt features into a mask of calm concern. He's worried that if he balks or lectures or makes any sudden movement at all, she'll end this conversation forthwith.

Belle reaches out and firmly recaptures his arm.

"He has his reasons, Archie. And also—_he has me. _I'll keep him safe. I'll keep him safe for as long as he'll let me." She smiles sadly, but Archie doesn't follow suit. He slides on his tortoise shell frames and drops the pretense of detachment.

"Belle, this disease isn't something you can 'keep him safe' from. Forgive me, but it's just like—it's very similar to James's addiction to heroin: it's not something that can be cured by a—by a _warm heart and a warm bed._ Belle? Forgive me. I'm sorry, Belle…"

Her eyes have begun to water behind her pale, pasted on smile, but she just shakes her head and ducks her chin, her brown curls falling loose over her wool suit jacket.

"I know," she says simply, _"I do."_

Sighing, she swipes at her eyes and picks up her sandwich. They both eat in silence for a spell.

"I have some news," she says at last, "and I was so excited to share it only a moment ago, but now I almost feel as though I should apologize. It will only make you more apprehensive…"

Archie carefully wipes his mouth with his napkin. "You can tell me anything, Belle. You know that. What good is having a psychiatrist friend if he can't offer you that?"

She smiles weakly.

"Six months back, during a visit to New York to see Matthew and Mary, I interviewed with the fine arts faculty at Columbia University. Of course, I presumed nothing would come of it. Those positions are ridiculously coveted, and I haven't published nearly enough. I haven't been teaching for long enough…"

Belle takes a breath. "Well, they called this afternoon while I was in class and offered me a position. It's full-time, tenure track, teaching undergraduate film studies courses—in New York City, near my family…"

"God, Belle—that's wonderful news! Did you think I'd be upset over your leaving King's College? Just so long as you come back for the annual Boxing Day bash and don't neglect your Trivial Pursuit duties, you're forgiven…"

"No—not that, Archie. The man I've been seeing. Nosty. I'm going to ask him to come with me."

The delight that lit up her friend's wide, freckled face is abruptly extinguished. "Come with you—to New York? But you've only known him, what? Two or three months, tops? How can you be sure—"

But Belle isn't listening.

Blood rushes to her cheeks, and the back of her neck prickles. Inexplicably, her body seems to know when Nosty is nearby.

One hundred people could be speaking, and she would easily be able to pluck his voice out from the clamor. Her back can be fully turned, but somehow she always knows when Nosty enters a room.

Belle stands, cutting off Archie's well-intentioned protests, and she turns, rising on tiptoe, staring around the large Franklin-Wilkins Library café. Students are huddled together in groups, snacking, scribbling in dog-eared notebooks, shuffling flashcards, and sipping from paper cups filled with strong, black tea.

There.

There he is.

Nosty is standing stock-still near the cash registers, glaring mayhem and murder at poor, oblivious Archie. A brown paper sack is clutched in his right fist. He has on his leather jacket, their red scarf, and one of the dashing new kilts she bought for him back in November.

He gave her such a bloody hard time over those kilts.

_"Have a bit of a Highlander fixation, eh love? Fancy finding out if I'm a True Scotsman beneath this tourist claptrap? Dae ye prefer your blokes go full regimental? Aye, I'll show you how to conduct a proper kilt inspection. Come here, beautiful…"_

Once Nosty got his first little taste of making Belle laugh, he cannot seem to leave off.

Her mirth is a prize he feels compelled to claim again and again, and he ruthlessly plies his Glesgie patter—quipping, mugging, and endlessly teasing to extract breathless giggles and unladylike snorts from his 'wee bird' within the privacy of Belle's snug flat.

Tangled up in her clean sheets, freed from his downswing and his cold, flimsy bed beneath the bridge, Nosty cracks wise until Belle's begging him, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" laughing and gasping all the while, and then she's twining her arms around his neck and playing with his hair and kissing him to shut him up—which is really all he wanted to begin with.

Now that he's been noticed, Nosty squares his narrow shoulders and begins to saunter across the crowded room.

He weaves his way between clusters of students, adding a showy little bounce to his stride. His long ropes of hair swing over his leather-clad shoulders, and his deep-set eyes are dark and hooded.

"Who's this, then?" He doesn't deign to look at Archie directly, though he's standing close enough to cuff him upside his ginger head.

He cannot quite bring himself to look directly at Belle, either.

He clenches and unclenches the paper bag.

Nosty is _hurt_ by this chummy, late lunch of tea and sandwiches between classes. His lips are set in a grim, straight line, and his posture is uncomfortably rigid. Nosty is _jealous._

Thankfully, Belle knows how to smooth things over.

She steps closer and slips a hand beneath his black leather jacket, touching the warm curve of his lower back. She tilts her head and kisses the whiskers that adorn his sharp chin, then presses a soft, chaste kiss to his lips. His mouth remains closed and immobile.

"Hey," she smiles, her fingers lightly tracing his spine.

"Hey," he replies at last, his eyes momentarily softening.

He looks as though he has temporarily forgotten the script.

Sliding her arm around Nosty's slim waist, Belle turns to Archie. "This is him. This is the man I've been telling you about. Nosty, this is my old friend, Dr. Archibald Hopper. We've known each other since Westminster Prep. He teaches Cognitive Neuropsychology courses here at King's College and he's an absolute demon at Trivial Pursuit…"

Archie rises and extends his hand, but Nosty makes no movement aside from grinding his teeth. The softness instantly fled his face at the mention of 'neuropsychology.'

Clearing his throat, Archie lowers his arm and reaches for his blazer on the back of the chair. "Well, best I be off to Denmark Hill for my evening class. It's quite a long jaunt, so I'll just—"

"A shrink, eh?" Nosty interrupts. "Ever put in any philanthropic time at Bethlem Royal?" He snickers to himself, baring his teeth. His left hand has unconsciously risen to his temple, and he taps out a staccato rhythm against the side of his head, sinking inwards.

"So yeah," he rallies, "I brought you a sandwich, bird. Homemade, since I know you won't take my money." Nosty backs away, and Belle's arm falls to her side. He tosses the paper sack onto the café table.

It's one of the few points of contention between them: Belle won't accept food or gifts bought with his drug money.

"Thank you—" she says.

"I can see it wasn't needed, so no need to thank, eh?" he retorts and spins on his heel to leave. Archie is frozen in place, holding his blazer, looking dreadfully uncomfortable.

"Nosty! Wait—would you like to sit in on my Shakespeare class tonight? That way we could walk home together. Titus Andronicus: villainy, depravity, bloody revenge…"

He pauses, considering. "Who would you say I was?"

"You could be yourself." He looks dubious. "Or for a bit of fun, you could be an eccentric visiting professor from Galway—"

"Galway—?" he snorts.

Belle smiles and concedes: "Alright, _Glasgow."_

He seems to weigh the possibility, bouncing on his toes, but then Nosty's hand creeps back up to his temple, and he shakes his head.

"Nah, I've got some business to attend to tonight, love. Some real _dodgy_ business."

He turns again to go.

"Will you be home later?" Belle asks, ashamed that Archie has heard the desperation that creeps into her voice. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

"Aye, I'll probably be home tonight," he allows, "but don't wait up, yeah?" He weaves his way back through the crowd and out of sight, shoulders squared and arms swinging.

Belle takes a step after him, but Archie touches her shoulder and brings her to a halt.

"He's on an up, Belle. You shouldn't take that personally. Manic episodes often manifest as anxious irritation. Do you know what to expect? It varies a great deal person by person…"

She shakes her head 'no.' She has only ever seen Nosty on a downswing.

"Then please—be careful, Belle," Archie says, "Mania is most often a bout of excess energy, racing thoughts, insomnia—but the worst highs can result in hallucinations, grandiose ideas, sometimes even a complete break with reality…"

Her brow knits. "I have to go to class," she murmurs.

"You have my mobile number. Use it. For any reason, Belle, day or night." Archie squeezes her shoulder.

"I have to go to class," she repeats quietly, "and then I have to talk to Nosty."


End file.
